


Night and Day

by Kujo1597



Series: Off the Train [2]
Category: Infinity Train (Cartoon)
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Lake's gonna do some self-reflecting, Post-Canon, Rated T just for language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 44,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23694304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kujo1597/pseuds/Kujo1597
Summary: Lake and Jesse were finally off the train, Lake's next challenge is to adjust to living a normal life and not constantly being on the run. Jesse needs to readjust to a regular life and help Lake learn about things. There will be learning, and growing, and self-reflection.(This takes place immediately after "Meeting the Parents" but reading that is not needed.)
Relationships: Jesse Cosay & Lake (Infinity Train)
Series: Off the Train [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1758598
Comments: 55
Kudos: 146





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Because this takes place immediately after the season is over I'm going with canon pronouns for Lake for the time being. Like I said in the description, this takes place right after another fanfic I have up. I just like that one as a one-shot and decided to leave it that way. And give an optional continuation.

After filling in Jesse’s parents on what had happened on the train, leaving out a few details such as the person Lake killed, and the one Alan Dracula did at Lake’s instruction. She and Jesse showered, then it was time for Lake to get a change of clothes from Jesse’s closet.

“Well let’s see, I’m a lot bigger than you,” Jesse thought out loud, occasionally throwing things out of his closet to get a better view. It was a complete disaster, and overly full. Jesse was not kidding when he said he had spare clothing. “I know I have a few things in here I was going to give to Nate once he got bigger. But you can have them.”

Lake looked into Jesse’s closet figuring that after living so close to each other for so long it didn’t matter. “Uuuhhh, I can just keep wearing what I have.”

“My mom wants to wash your clothes,” Jesse said as he tossed a small pair of jeans onto the floor next to Lake. “They’ve been caked in mud, dirt, food, and goodness knows what else.”

“Slug slime’s one of those things.”

“When you say ‘slug,’ do you mean a normal slug, or a slug person?” Jesse turned around to face Lake.

“Slug person. I squeezed between two of them while running away from the flecs. It was really gross.”

“I bet. Aha!” Jesse tossed an old printed tee next to Lake. “I know that one’s not your tastes but it’ll probably fit.” 

Jesse took a look at Lake, taking in her small size. “Probably.”

Then he went back to rooting through everything. “You also need pajamas.”

A pair of blue sweats, and a white t-shirt were apparently very easy to find.

“I actually found my Nate Box,” Jesse said before throwing a couple more outfits Lake’s way.

“Thanks for lending me your clothes,” Lake said with a smile. “After we go shopping I’ll give them back to you.”

“Nah,” Jesse waved his hand. “You don’t have to. They’re hand-me-downs, and I’m handing them down to you. That’s how family works.”

“Hmm,” Lake thought about what Jesse said as she looked at all the clothes loosely piled next to her.

“Tulip is an only child,” Lake said. “So hand-me-downs weren’t really a thing with her.”

Jesse turned around and sat on the floor as he listened to Lake.

“Jesse.”

“Yeah?”

“I have absolutely no idea what to do with a little brother.”

Jesse couldn’t help it, he laughed. He had prepared himself for Lake to say something big, and maybe even profound. But nah, it was Lake.

“You don’t really have to do anything,” Jesse said through the laughs. “Just try to be nice to him. And maybe rib him a little.” The laughter stopped and was replaced by a sigh. “But maybe you shouldn’t be taking advice from me about this sorta thing.”

Lake walked over to Jesse and sat down next to him, resting her shoulder on his. “You made one mistake. Nate already forgives you. Just do better moving forward, that’s all that really matters.”

“I suppose,” Jesse didn’t sound convinced. He looked down at his right palm, a habit he picked up on the train. 

Lake’s shoulder shifted as she reached out her own hand and interlocked her fingers with Jesse’s. “I saw your old pictures with Nate, and I’ve seen the way he looks at you. He loves you. So you must be a good brother. Just keep doing your best and try to forgive yourself. Your relationship will be repaired; I’m sure of it.”

“Thanks,” Jesse’s voice was soft. “You know, you say you don’t know how to be an older sibling. But that sounds like pretty good advice to me.”

“That’s what friends are for, we help each other.”

“Yeah, and when you need it, I’ll be there for you too.”

“You’d better be there for me tomorrow then. It’ll be my first time out and about with that many humans around.”

“Nervous?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Lakes hands started to shake. “I’m worried about how poorly adjusted I might be. Let’s be honest here, I’m not exactly socialized.”

“You’re not a dog.”

“Well, no but-”

“-You’ll be fine,” Jesse let go of Lake’s hand and wrapped his arm around her instead. “Give yourself a little credit. Sure, it’ll be weird for you being around humans and not tiny animal people. But it’ll be good practise for when you start going to school. Man, we get packed like sardines in there.”

“Not helping,” Lake said as she clutched her head in her hands. 

“Woah, hey,” Jesse had never seen Lake like that before, it was scary. He rubbed her back hoping to soothe her. “I’ll talk to my mom and we’ll take things slowly and avoid the mall. She’ll understand. We can work up to actual crowds, and maybe eventually school. If you want to go to it with me.”

Lake took a deep calming breath, as she had seen Tulip do a million times. “I think... as long as you’re with me I’ll make it through it.”

“I’ll always be there for you,” Jesse decided that Lake had calmed down enough to be pulled into a gentle side-hug. “We’re more than just travel friends now. We’re best friends for life.”

“That’s so cheesy,” Lake softly laughed, her body relaxed slightly. “But you’re right, you dumb cheese ball.”

“Hey you’re friends with this cheese ball.”

With a chuckle Lake’s body returned to its normal amount of tension, she was never fully relaxed; not after being on the run for so long. “Yep. I’m stuck with you. Oh well. I wouldn’t trade you for the world.”

“You sap,” Jesse fondly teased Lake. “I wouldn’t trade you for anything either.”

The two sat as they were for a couple minutes before Jesse decided to give Lake some privacy so she could change. Whittney was standing just outside the door.

“I heard you two talking and didn’t want to interrupt,” she said. “It sounded important.”

Jesse took a few more steps away from the door before speaking, he kept his voice low. “Lake’s nervous about tomorrow. She’s never really been around humans before. Well, that’s a lie, she’s been around ones that treated her like garbage.”

“Right... the gang,” Whittney filled in the gaps. “Okay. We’ll start off with some quiet stores and see how she’s feeling after that. We don’t want to do too much too fast.”

“Yeah, I’ll also be coming with you two,” Jesse said. “Lake said that would help her out and... Well. To be honest, I don’t know if I’m ready to be away from Lake for a full day yet. We went through a lot together, you know?”

“I understand, you need each other right now,” Whittney looked at Jesse with kind eyes. 

The door creaking pulled the attention of Whittney and Jesse. Lake sheepishly stepped out wearing what Jesse said were pajamas. She was practically swimming in the shirt. “Sorry, I overheard you.”

“Do you have your old clothes with you?” Whittney asked.

“Yeah,” Lake handed them over to Whittney. “I guess they were pretty gross by now.”

Whittney made sure to not mention the smell coming off of the clothing, Jesse’s also had a pong to them. So she simply thanked Lake. “You’re going to have a big day tomorrow. So try to go to bed early.”

“Alright,” Jesse said. “So Lake, want a bedtime snack?”

“Sure,” Lake shrugged. 

“But first you should show Lake to her room,” Whittney made sure to remind Jesse.

“Oh yeah!” And it was a good thing she did. “We’ll swing by there on the way.”

The guest room ended up being the second door down from Jesse’s room, right next to Nate’s. Jesse opened the door revealing a tidy room with a small-ish bed in it. All the colours of everything were pale and inoffensive. The furniture was mismatched however. 

Hanging on the wall above the dresser was a mirror. Lake jumped up at the sight of it, but quickly calmed down once she remembered that the flecs were gone.

“So yeah,” Jesse didn’t say anything about Lake flinching, he actually did too. “This is where you’ll be staying. The dresser’s empty so you can put all your clothes in there if you want. There’s no closet, this was actually an office when my family moved in here. We do have a laptop that we take turns using in here sometimes. But we can just take it wherever when you want to be alone in your room.”

Lake took another look around. “It’s nice in here.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Jesse rubbed the back of his neck. “If you do decide to stay with us for a while I’m sure my parents would let you decorate it how you want. Buy some posters, paint the walls, get new curtains, or anything, really.”

“Alright, I’ll keep that mind. But I’m fine with it the way it is.”

“Would you like to hang out and take things in?”

“Nah, I can do that later. Let’s go get that snack.”

Jesse agreed to Lake’s decision and took her to the kitchen. He strolled over to the fridge like he had done all his life and opened up the crisper drawer. 

“Want one?” Jesse asked as he pulled a red fruit out of the fridge.

“Sure,” Lake accepted his offer and caught the fruit that was tossed to her.

“It’s an apple,” Jesse said as he bit into his.

“I know what apples are,” Lake said, miffed, if she didn’t know what something was then she’d ask, Jesse knew that.

Lake took a bite into the crisp red apple and cringed. She hastily swallowed.

“Nope, can’t do it,” Lake quickly said. “It’s too much like eating raw onions. I just can’t.”

She briskly walked over to counter putting her apple on it to wash her hands. “I’m cutting it up. Where do you keep your knives?”

This whole time Jesse was munching on his apple with a puzzled expression. “Onions?”

Whittney heard the commotion and checked up on Jesse and Lake while holding a laundry basket.

“Everything alright in here?” she asked.

“Well we learned that Lake doesn’t like apples,” Jesse replied. “By the way, knives are next to the sink, plates are above the blender.”

Lake turned around. “It’s not that I don’t like apples. Biting into one is just too much like an onion.”

“Does it taste like onion to you?” Jesse asked, still puzzled.

“No, it’s not a taste thing, it’s the sensation,” Lake replied after a sigh. “The crisp sound as my teeth make their way through... The feel of the skin giving way...” Lake shuddered as she grabbed the tools she needed and got to work.

“Who on earth eats onions like that?” Whittney asked.

“Ah that’s right, Mikayla always did say that Tulip’s tastes are weird,” Lake dragged her hand down her face. “Onions are Tulip’s favourite food and she eats raw ones as a snack,” Lake went back to cutting up her apple. “She especially likes to eat them at the computer while doing her coding.”

Lake turned around again, knife in-hand. “Which means _I_ had to eat them with her. And it’s the grossest thing ever!”

“Maybe you should be a bit more careful with the knife,” Whittney felt nervous with how much Lake was waving it around, especially when Lake patted herself on the chest. “And also, yes. That is kind of gross.”

Jesse stared hard at his half-eaten apple. “Yuck. I like onions but not that much.”

“I feel so valid right now.” Lake said then finished cutting up her apple.

She bit into a piece, and it made the same sound, but because her mouth wasn’t full, and it was far sweeter than any onion it was actually really good.

“So good news, I do like apple slices.”

“Oh nice,” Jesse said. “Apples are one of my favourites too. Do you know what all can be done with apples?”

“Well, I know about apple pie obviously,” Lake replied, her and Jesse started walking to the living room. “I also know about apple crumble, and dehydrated apple slices, and… that’s about it.”

“You know I’m going to have you try all those.”

“Maybe not the dehydrated apple, I remember that being pretty spongey.”

“Oh so you’ve eaten all those things?”

“Sort of. About in the same capacity I have eaten onions; but I actually like apple pie.”

“Huh. I guess we’ll have to think of other things for you try out,” Jesse sat down on the couch, he watched Lake stand next to the arm of it. “You can sit down. I mean, when’s the last time you sat on a couch?”

“Like… ten minutes ago,” Lake replied and chomped into another apple slice.

“That doesn’t count, you were leaning on it,” Jesse patted the cushion next to him. “C’mon, get comfy.”

Lake sat on the cushion Jesse invited her onto, when she allowed herself to lean back on the couch Lake felt several years of stress leave her body. It was the most comfortable thing she had ever sat on.

“I’m never getting up,” Lake sounded as relaxed as she felt.

Jesse looked at her softly, he too felt more relaxed. Seeing Lake calmly sitting on the couch chowing down on apple slices made it all feel so real. He and his best friend were finally off the train and safe.

What to Jesse felt like months of fatigue melted from his body, he leaned up against Lake with a content sigh.

A few minutes later Nate came bounding into the room wearing his own pajamas, excited to finally have his brother home again. He leapt onto the couch forgetting about Lake and almost landing on her.

“Oh! Sorry!” Nate exclaimed.

“It’s fine,” Lake said.

“I’m surprised you don’t have the TV on,” Nate said.

Jesse gasped. “TV! I forgot all about that!”

“What shows do you like, Lake?” Nate asked.

“I… don’t know,” Lake replied. “I barely got to see any TV at all, only scenes where the screen’s really dark.”

“Which means we need to show you all our favourite shows,” Jesse decided that very quickly. “It’s a good thing Netflix exists!”

So it was decided, Jesse gave control of the remote over to Nate; Jesse didn’t care what show was put on. All he cared about was being with his family, and Lake.

* * *

After binging shows for a couple hours with everybody, it was time for bed. Jesse separated from Lake in front of her bedroom door. It was hard leaving her, but it had to be done.

Jesse looked around his bedroom taking everything in, and then flopped onto his bed. He forgot just how nice beds felt and fell asleep almost instantly.

In his sleep Jesse’s mind was a mess of images, the flecs chasing him and M.T. down, a green glow encompassing everything, Grace, Simon, angry denizens. None of it was coherent, none of the events made sense, they all moved erratically.

Up until the point where M.T. was grabbed by several hands. She looked terrified, everything moved in slow motion.

The only thing moving quickly at that point was Jesse’s heart; he shouted “M.T.” as he shot up in his own bed. Jesse gripped his blankets and looked around to see where he was. It was a pitch-black room, where the only sound was a ticking clock.

A clock, something not on the train.

But that wasn’t enough, Jesse got out of bed and quietly walked past Nate’s room and up to the guest room, the room where M.T. should have been sleeping.

Jesse’s hand shook as he reached out for the doorknob, he didn’t know what he would do if he opened the door and M.T. wasn’t in bed.

He took the plunge and slowly opened the door so as to not wake up his friend.

The first place Jesse looked was the bed, and there wasn’t anybody on it.

His heart sank.

And then Jesse heard it, that terrible, but wonderful sound. Snoring.

Jesse followed the sound, and sure enough, on the floor right next to bed in a very uncomfortable looking position was M.T. no, _Lake_. Her name was Lake.

Jesse stared at Lake. He felt like he needed to imprint the image in his mind before going back to sleep.

The unfortunate part of this idea was Lake’s survival instinct. It kicked in and she bolted upright, ready to run away from whoever or whatever was staring at her.

“Woah, hey hey, it’s me,” Jesse whispered. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“What are you doing in here?” Lake asked after calming down.

“I had a nightmare,” Jesse replied before sitting down next to Lake. “It was about everybody chasing us on the train. And… you being captured.”

“I see,” Lake sounded tired. “I’ve also been having nightmares.”

“Really? You seemed pretty sound asleep to me.”

“I can only sleep for minutes at a time,” Lake shifted so she was hugging her knees. “I think we’re having similar nightmares except mine might be a bit more… graphic.”

“Graphic?”

“Sieve wasn’t lying when he said I killed Mace,” Lake was too tired to plan out what to tell Jesse, and how to say it. “I mentioned that he tried to drag me into the wheels of the train, and how I saw him get caught in them. That was a lie. I pushed him into the wheels.” Lake inhaled, sounding choked up, the room was too dark for Jesse to be able to tell for sure if she was crying or not. “I… watched the life drain from his eyes. In the moment I just wanted to see that I finally was rid of him for good. But when I try to sleep I always end up seeing him, both alive, and in-death.”

“I wish I was there to help,” Jesse said solemnly. “You shouldn’t have had to do that.”

“The same goes for you, I’m honestly glad you weren’t there for it. You don’t deserve to see the same things as me; you’re a good person.”

“So are you,” Jesse inched closer to Lake, he fought the urge to hug her, it didn’t seem like the right time. “You’re a good person who was put into a bad situation.”

“How do you know that for sure? The situation I was in didn’t make me steal things, it didn’t make me beat up a bunch of blacksmiths-“

“-Did the blacksmiths attack you first?”

“Yeah because I was stealing from them.”

“And why were you doing that?” Jesse tried his best to not sound accusatory.

“Because I was sick of wearing Tulip’s clothes. It’s such small reason to do it.”

Jesse nodded. “Sounds to me like you were stealing things because you used to be a reflection and wanted to move on from that. And you beat up those blacksmiths because they went after you. Did they ask what you were doing?”

“No, they just jumped straight into action.”

“Right. So self-defence. Like what happened with the flecs. And be honest here, all you stole was clothes, right?”

“Right. Just clothes.”

“That’s not a big deal if you ask me,” Jesse said with a shrug. “And you know, a friend of mine told me that what matters most is what you do moving forward.”

Lake flicked Jesse on the forehead. “You just repeated my own advice to me.”

“Well it’s good advice. And if you want some advice you didn’t give me then, my mom likes to say that bad people don’t worry about being bad. The fact that you’re worried about this means that you’re not a bad person.”

Lake sighed. “You might be right. I dunno, I don’t really feel like a good person right now.”

Feeling that it was finally appropriate to do so, Jesse wrapped his arm around Lake. “You haven’t even had a day to digest everything that happened while I was gone.”

“You’re right, hopefully I’ll feel less terrible eventually,” Lake gave into Jesse’s embrace and her eyelids felt heavy.

“I wonder if my parents would get mad if we shared a bed.”

“We can’t. I’m too heavy; the bed in here made an awful sound when I sat on it.”

“And that’s why you’re on the floor. Well, then, I wonder if my parents would get mad if we slept on the floor together.”

“They know we camped out together so it’d be dumb if they did.”

“You have a point. Want me to stay in here tonight then?”

“No. If we do decide to share a room then it should be yours. Your parents would get scared if they look for you and you’re nowhere in sight.”

“Good call. So… are we going through with it?”

“It’s up to you, they’re your parents.”

Jesse thought about it for a bit. “Yeah, we’ll just explain to them in the morning that it’s too soon for us to spend a full night apart.”

“Okay,” Lake agreed to the idea. “If they have a problem with it then it’s on them. I don’t see why it’d be any different from when we were on the train.”

And with that, the two got off of the floor and quietly made their way to Jesse’s room. But not before Jesse took the comforter and pillows off of Lake’s bed so they’d have some extra padding between them and the hard floor.

The two created what looked a bit like a very comfortable nest to sleep in and by this point they were too exhausted to care about societal norms and fell asleep curled up together, taking comfort in each other’s presence.

* * *

The feeling of a hard metal hand hitting his face woke Jesse up, and when he awoke Jesse noticed that he lost the feeling in his arm. After looking over it became clear why; Lake was sleeping on it. Solid metal, and weighing enough to break a scale.

Of course this meant that Jesse couldn’t get up until Lake did. But he wasn’t complaining, it was nice to be able to finally relax. Jesse made sure to not stare at Lake because he didn’t want a repeat of last night.

It took about ten minutes for Lake to wake up. She did with a snort and blearily looked at Jesse taking in his face. Then she realized that she’s still on his arm.

“Ope, that must’ve hurt,” Lake said as she sat up. She rubbed her head. “What time is it?”

“No clue,” Jesse replied truthfully as he shook out his arm. “Sometimes when I’m trying to fall asleep I stare and stare at a normal clock so I have small one with hands now.”

“Huh,” Lake looked over at the clock, unable to make out the numbers. “That sounds like an anxiety thing.”

“It… probably is,” Jesse confessed. “Well, you know how I used to be. A really intense people pleaser, it wears on you. I was constantly stressing about making plans that all my friends would like. Making sure everybody got along. You know…”

“Yeah. Well, hopefully now you won’t have that problem.”

“Maybe, but I’m pretty okay with my clock,” Jesse grunted as he got off the floor; he walked over so he could check the time. “Usually I’m in bed so I can read it. And it’d be weird not hearing it tick. Well… I guess I’ve gotten used to sleeping without it now.”

Lake also stood up and stretched out. “So what time is it?”

“About…” Jesse did a double-take. “NOON?!”

“I’m guessing that’s really late for you,” Lake looked over Jesse’s shoulder at the clock. Maybe it was because of just waking up but the numbers were kind of… blurry.

“Even on weekends I wake up before nine.”

“Seriously? On weekends Tulip easily slept in past noon. Of course she would always stay up really late working on her programming, or playing video games.”

“I’ve always been early to bed, early to rise. How about you?”

“You know the answer to that. I just sleep whenever I feel safe enough to and usually for a couple hours at most.”

“Even when you first got out of the mirror world?”

“I’ve never not been chased by the flecs.”

Jesse felt a discomfort in the pit of his stomach; even three weeks of that was hard. “Well. Now you can have a regular sleep schedule.”

Lake snorted. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“No I’m serious,” Jesse turned around and put his hands on Lake’s shoulders. “You’re safe now, you don’t need to constantly worry anymore.”

“True. But it’ll be a process, okay? So try not to worry too much if you see me awake in the middle of the night. I don’t actually need as much sleep as you do. It’d be really stupid if a reflection did. Could you imagine the confusion if a person went up to the mirror and their reflection was passed out on the floor, and not copying their every move?”

“Mmmm...” Jesse wasn’t sold on the ‘not needing much sleep’ thing. “I guess that’s true.”

“I mean hey, it’s useful,” Lake shrugged. “So anyway, why don’t we head downstairs to eat breakfast... or lunch... brunch? I dunno.”

“Yes!” Jesse pumped his fist. “I bet my mom made something delicious! She always does.” He then grinned at Lake. “And you get to taste it!”

With a “let’s go” Jesse took Lake to the kitchen for breakfast.

A delicious smell immediately hit Jesse, he knew it well and had no idea just how much he missed his mom’s cooking. It almost reduced him down to a blubbering mess, much to Lake’s amusement.

“Morning mom,” Jesse said, the words feeling both familiar and somehow weird.

“Good morning Jesse,” Whittney turned around with a huge glowing smile. “And good morning to you too Lake.”

“Oh, uh, g’morning Whittney,” Lake shyly waved.

“Morning Nate,” Jesse said as he sat down.

“Yeah, morning,” Lake figured she should greet Nate too.

“Morning guys,” Nate greeted them back cheerfully. 

“What’s for breakfast?” Jesse asked.

“Waffles,” Whittney replied. “And in fact, I already have some waiting for you.”

Whittney placed plates down in front of both her sons. Nate’s waffles had syrup on them, and Jesse’s had strawberries and whipped cream.

“My faaaavooouuriiiite,” Jesse gushed as he wiggled his fingers, ready to dig in. “Thank you so much!”

“You’re very welcome,” Whittey said with a smile, she turned her head towards Lake. “What would you like on yours?”

“Mine? Uuhhh...” Lake thought hard. “I don’t actually know. I’ve never eaten waffles before.” She looked at Jesse’s. “I’ve heard of waffles but I didn’t even know you could put all that on them.”

“It’s sooo good,” Jesse said. And then, he had an idea. “Wait! Lake!”

“Yeah?”

“You can try some of mine! Then you can decide what you want!”

Jesse pushed his plate towards Lake, and she accepted it. Lake grabbed her fork and knife and cut off a bite making sure to everything on it. She put the food in her mouth and chewed. 

If Jesse didn’t know any better he’d swear Lake had stars in her eyes. He didn’t protest when Lake cut another piece off for herself for another taste, “just to be sure.” Or so Jesse could easily imagine Lake saying.

“Jesse Jesse!” Nate sounded excited, he drew Jesse’s attention away from Lake. “Pass mine to her so she can try syrup.”

Jesse scooched his plate back getting a “tch” from Lake and then placed Nate’s in front of her. Lake’s annoyance didn’t last long as she cut off some of Nate’s waffles to try. 

“Oh no,” Lake said.

“What?” Jesse, Nate and Whittney all asked simultaneously. 

“I don’t know which I like more,” Lake replied. She drummed her fingers on the table thinking. “I think... I’ll go with what Jesse has. It’s not as sweet as Nate’s which I like more.”

Whittney smiled warmly at Lake. “You got it dear.”

It didn’t take long for Whittney to whip up a plate of waffles for Lake. She put the plate down.

“Thank you,” Lake said seconds before digging in.

“You’re welcome,” Whittney smiled.

“So where’s dad?” Jesse asked.

“He’s in the garage looking for something. I was actually just about to go get him.”

With that Whittney left the room.

“I wonder what he’s looking for,” Jesse said.

“I think dad’s looking for old clothes,” Nate said with his mouth full. “He said he had a couple things Lake might like.”

“Wait, really?” Lake couldn’t believe her ears. 

“Yeah,” Nate just shrugged and ate some more.

It didn’t take long for both parents to sit down at the table with their own meals. Stephan kissed Whittney on the lips as he thanked her for making lunch. Lake couldn't help watching it.

“So how did you two sleep?” Whittney asked.

“Not bad.” “Meh.”

“Huh, really,” Whittney looked at both Lake and Jesse. “You two were pretty conked out when I checked on you.”

“You checked on us?” Jesse asked.

“Told you,” Lake said

“Well, yeah... after Lake came into my room I think we both slept pretty good. But before that, well... I had some nightmares about the train.”

“And I had a lot of nightmares.”

“I see,” Whittney said with a sigh. “But those nightmares stopped when you slept together?”

“Yeah,” Jesse and Lake replied.

“I heard you two were on the floor,” Stephan said. “Is there a reason for that?”

“I think I’m too heavy to sleep on a bed,” Lake replied. “The one I tried sleeping on sounded pretty bad when I sat on it.”

Stephan looked lost in thought. 

“You know,” Jesse hesitated. “I think for the first while me and Lake might need to sleep together. We kinda always did on the train and it’s weird not having her next to me. I don’t know if Lake feels the same way-”

“-I do.”

“Oh! I know we’ll have to eventually start sleeping alone but for now, Lake will probably stay in my room. If that’s okay with her of course.”

“It is.”

Stephan was still lost in thought, and Whittney gave things a think too.

“That works,” she said. “The important thing is that you two get all the sleep you need.”

“Is that why you let me sleep in until noon?” Jesse asked.

“Of course!” Whittney was almost insulted that Jesse would imply otherwise. “And also, you two were too cute to wake up.”

Lake’s face became completely covered in a blush. However this was one of the few times where being called “cute” didn’t feel extremely insulting.

Maybe it was because a loving mother said it?

“Anyway, we should go over our plans for today,” Whittney declared. “After lunch we’ll take Lake shopping for some clothing and see how she feels after that.”

“I mean, you won’t hear any complaints from me,” Lake had finished her waffles and pushed her plate forward. “Just as long as Jesse can come with.”

“Of course he can,” Whittney said. “And if you decide you want to go home, at any point say something and I’ll drive you back.”

Curiosity flashed on Lake’s face when Whittney said “go home.”

“Sure, uh, thanks,” Lake could barely make eye contact with Whittney, a mother like her was almost unimaginable. 

“I won’t be joining you guys,” Stephan said. “Nate, do you want to go out with Jesse and Lake, or hang out with me?”

Nate fidgeted in his chair as he thought. “Can I decide in a little bit?”

“Sure,” Stephan replied.

After hashing out plans a little bit more everybody got ready to go out shopping. Lake decided to wear some clothes borrowed from Jesse. His tastes were very different from hers but some of those outfits weren’t bad at all. 

Nate ended up staying home with his dad, as excited as he was to have Jesse back he just didn’t feel like spending a whole day looking at clothes. Whittney gave her husband a kiss goodbye, and once again, Lake watched.

“The first stop is the thrift shop,” Whittney said before entering the car.

Jesse climbed into one side of the car and Lake stepped into the other and the car leaned terribly to one side once Lake got all the way in.

“Uuuhhh...” Whittney tried to figure out how to put it delicately, she gave up. “Lake, hun. You should probably move to the middle. This amount of lean is bad for the car’s suspension.”

“Oh! Sure,” Lake said before shuffling around to get into the hump seat. The car stopped leaning to one side but it was riding a touch low. But not enough to be immediately concerning. 

After making sure everybody was buckled up Whittney drove off.

* * *

The staff member working at the thrift store gave Lake a long hard look when she stepped into the building. But Lake paid the employee no mind, there was no reason to when literally everybody who sees Lake will stare. So she simply strolled over to the clothing rack with Jesse following behind her. Jesse did make sure to smile at the employee as he passed by. 

“So do you have anything in mind?” Jesse asked. 

“Not particularly,” Lake replied as she sifted through the clothing. “I guess I’m ‘planning’ on just seeing what catches my eye.”

“Well,” Jesse started to look through the clothes too, “is there anything you don’t want to wear?”

“No skirts, and no dresses.”

That wasn’t exactly a shocker to Jesse, or Whittney who had joined the kids by this point. 

“You know,” Lake picked up a black shirt that appealed to her. “One of the reasons why I grabbed the clothes that I did was so I could finally wear a colour other than grey.”

He always tried not to, but Jesse snorted. “Yeah, _you really branched out._ Instead of wearing all grey you now wear black and grey.”

“Wha-hey,” Lake held up her foot slightly. “My boots are brown. Give me some credit.”

Jesse looked down at Lake’s foot. “True. Okay, I’ll give you that.”

“Here, hand me the things you like,” Whittney said once the kids got back to looking at all the clothes.

“Sure,” Lake agreed then gave the shirt from earlier to Whittney. Then she saw a red hoodie. “I like this colour.”

Whittney looked at it. “The fabric on the elbows is a little thin. They’ll probably wear out soon.”

“That’s okay, I can just rip the sleeves off,” Lake said.

“Is that what happened to your shirt? You know, the one I just washed.”

“Nah, the sleeves were fine on that. I just felt like tearing them off.”

A laugh from near the entrance could barely be heard; it was a small store.

“It sounds like I’m pretty much 85% of your impulse control,” Jesse started to laugh. “That _was_ before we met.”

Lake joined in on the chuckles. “Honestly though... You’re not _wrong_. I was on my best behaviour with you around.”

“Oh no… Please tell me you’re at least the one with the brain cell.”

“Well duh. That goes without saying.”

“I still can’t believe you know memes.”

“Tulip’s a nerd! Of course I know memes.”

Jesse put his hand to his chest. “Thank you Tulip, for being a heckin’ nerd.”

Lake held her palms together in a way that vaguely resembled praying. “Memes are the greatest gift she gave me.”

The two broke down laughing again.

“Mm,” Lake barely regained her composure as she went back to looking through all the shirts. Then after a bit Lake decided to look at pants and saw a pair of dark blue overalls. “I have ideas for this.”

“Overalls?” Whittney smiled. “You’d look really cute in those.”

“Ah but,” Lake held up her finger, “you’re probably thinking I’d be wearing them properly.”

Whittney tried to imagine how else Lake would wear them.

“Oh! I know what you mean!” Jesse didn’t have to imagine too hard. “That’d look cool.”

“Thank you,” Lake looked smug.

Some more clothes were added to the pile on Whittney’s arm, some shirts, a hoodie, pants, and a flannel. On the way out Lake spotted some black boots on a shelf. She stood on her toes to try to reach them but couldn’t quite mange.

“Hey Jesse,” Lake pointed at the boots. “Can you get that for me?”

“No prob,” Jesse stood on his toes and he also couldn’t reach. “Okay prob.”

“Should I lift you?” Lake asked.

“Or a better option; hey mom, Lake likes those boots, could you get them down for her?” Jesse called his mom over, he wasn’t a stranger to that.

Whittney easily reached the boots and handed them over to Lake. “Alright, try them on. They look a little big to me.”

“Thanks…” somehow Whittney getting the boots was a lot more embarrassing than if Jesse had done it.

Lake tried on the boots and they fit surprisingly well. Whittney was right, they looked big, but Lake had larger feet than one would think. After walking around enough to satisfy Whittney the boots were placed on the counter along with the clothing.

Whittney made small talk with the employee, as she paid. Then it was back into the car.

“Okay, if you’re feeling up to it I want to go to a retail store,” Whittney said once Lake had taken her spot in the hump seat. “It’ll be a lot more busy than the thrift store but we’ll find some more stuff you need that weren’t there.”

“Sure,” Lake quietly agreed. “I can handle people, I’m sure I can at least.”

Feeling satisfied with the answer Whittney started the drive to the department store.

* * *

The amount of cars in the parking lot actually intimidated Lake. She had no idea that it was actually very few compared to what a mall would have of course; but it still felt like a lot.

“We can just go home if you changed your mind,” Whittney noticed Lake’s nervousness.

“No, it’s fine,” Lake said. “I need to get used to being around people and this will be the quickest way.”

Jesse clapped Lake on the shoulder. “Yeah that’s the spirit! And I know my way around this place so just give the word and I’ll get you out of there.”

With a smile Lake placed her hand on Jesse’s. “Thanks.”

Jesse returned the smile then got out of the car with Lake following. As everybody walked through the parking lot Lake and Jesse held hands and talked. The nervous energy dissipated.

Upon entering the store Lake looked around and saw clothes as far as the eye could see. Whittney led her to the women’s section to look for some more clothing. Lake didn’t have much luck with that however. Especially not the shirts, none of them jumped out at her, except for a tank top or two.

Feeling unsatisfied with the shirts Lake started to look at pants. Those had more potential than the shirts did. Or at least until Lake took a closer look.

“Seriously?” immediately came out of Lake’s mouth when she discovered the lack of pockets.

“Oohhh… right,” realization dawned on Whittney. “Yeah that’s normal. I actually found a pattern at some point to make better pockets out of scrap fabric. So you don’t have to worry too much about it.”

“It’s so dumb how you have to make pockets yourself,” Lake grumbled. “It’s not like I have anything to carry around right now. But I will eventually.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Whittney said. “It’s not something we should have to do, but a lot of us do.”

“But more importantly,” Whittney picked up one of the smaller pairs of pants, “I’m going to show you a little trick my mom taught me for sizing your pants.” She held them up to her neck. “If they meet in the back with ease then your pants should fit your waist.”

“Huh,” Lake took the pants from Whittney and tried the neck trick herself. “You know a lot of stuff.”

Whittney warmly laughed. “Well, I’ve been around a lot longer than you. You tend to learn a thing or two.”

“Though we do have another problem, the waist is fine but…” Lake demonstrated how the pants dragged on the floor.

“I can hem them.”

“Of course you can. Is there anything you can’t do?”

“Keep Jesse out of trouble,” Whittney replied with a wink.

Lake snickered. “I hear that.”

Jesse opted not to protest, all throughout his life he did tend to find himself in trouble.

Lake looked through some more pants and tended to lean more towards one with a high waist and distressed jeans. The high-waisted pants surprised Whittney, the distressed jeans, not so much.

“I need more than just pants though,” Lake said as she walked through the store. “But none of those shirts really speak to me.”

“Some of them are pretty… feminine,” Jesse said in thought. “There’s no rule saying you have to shop in the women’s section you know.”

“You’re right, but there’s a problem with that,” Lake stopped and grabbed a t-shirt off of a nearby rack and held it up to herself. The shirt easily went down to Lake’s crotch.

“Oh my gosh. It didn’t really click that you’re so short. Uh... hmm.” Jesse weighed his options, trying to decide if it was worth it to tell Lake that she could look in the boys’ section.

“How did you not realize I’m short?” Lake was genuinely curious.

“It’s just the way to carry yourself I guess,” Jesse replied. “You usually stand with your back straight and your shoulders square. You’re kinda like a frilled-lizard flaring out to look bigger I guess?”

Lake put the shirt back. “I can see that.”

The group went back to walking around glancing at clothes. Whittney eventually got a text from her husband and passed her phone over to Jesse. And he read it.

|Don’t tell Lake. I want to surprise her with something.|

The next text was a picture of various bed sheets.

|Which would she want?|

Jesse looked at the picture some more and took in the options, he texted back. “probably not the skulls”

After some more thinking Jesse had an idea. “Hey Lake, what’s your favourite colour?”

“I don’t have one yet,” Lake replied. “Also, that’s kinda random.”

“I was just wondering because if I knew your favourite colour I could look for clothes in that.”

Lake thought for a minute. “I like the shade of blue most of your coat is. Not the one you’re wearing right now, the one you did on the train.”

“Okay, so not to be nitpicky because I’m not, but a lot of jocks are,” Jesse rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s actually called a letterman’s jacket.”

“A coat’s a coat,” Lake said with a raised eyebrow.

“Well, yeah, but a letterman’s jacket is a point of pride for a lot of people, it’s usually star athletes who wear them,” Jesse held his hands up to himself. “Again, I don’t care if you call it a coat, or a jacket. But in school you might want to be more careful about that.”

“That’s so stupid,” Lake said under her breath. “Alright I’ll try not to insult any of your jocks.”

Jesse chuckled and texted Lake’s answer to his dad, then handed the phone back to Whittney before the group moved on. Lake noticed a nice blue sweater and picked it up. Her eyes lit up when she felt the fabric.

“You can just slip it on quickly,” Jesse said. “Nobody’ll notice.”

“Alright,” Lake took a quick look around before doing what Jesse said she could, probably an old holdover from run-ins with various authorities.

After putting on the sweater Lake gripped the neck of it and pulled it up to her cheeks, looking like a cute little turtle.

“I didn’t know clothes could be this soft...” Her voice gave off quiet amazement.

Jesse gasped. “You’ve never worn fleece before!” He wrapped his arms around himself. “Fleece pajamas feel like a hug.”

“I need this,” Lake said with a sparkle in her eye. “And the pajamas too.”

“Of course!” Jesse didn’t even hesitate.

Meanwhile Whittney was watching the exchange with an amused smile.

After picking out a nice set of fleece pajamas, and some plaid pajama bottoms Lake told Whittney that she was pretty done with clothes shopping.

“Alright, but before we pay for any of this you should try on your clothes,” Whittney said then pointed towards and employee standing near the changing rooms. “So just go over there and ask her for a room.”

“Sure,” Lake took a breath then walked over to the employee with her clothes in-hand. “Hey!”

The employee practically jumped out of her skin.

“Ope, I…got nervous, sorry,” Lake felt kind of bad.

“It’s okay,” the employee said with her hand on her chest. “How can I help you?”

“I’d like to try these clothes on,” Lake replied.

The employee looked at Lake in thought. “Unfortunately policy won’t allow me to let you do that if you’re wearing body paint.”

“Body paint?” Lake realized why the employee might have said that. “No, I’m actually metal.”

And to demonstrate this Lake knocked her knuckles on her collarbone sending a ringing sound through the area.

The employee’s eyes widened, then her face returned to being professional. “Oh. Uh, I guess then it is okay for you try things on.”

“Here,” she showed Lake to an empty room. “Just call me if you need anything.”

With a small “thanks” Lake stepped into the room and hung up her clothes.

“I’ve seen one of these before,” Lake absent-mindedly said before changing.

A little time passed and Lake heard Whittney talking to her in an encouraging way. “Why don’t you come out and show off your clothes?”

Lake kind of didn’t want to, but she remembered it being a part of clothes shopping with a family.

“How’s the fit of your pants?” Whittney asked.

“Good,” Lake replied. “Long, but everything else is fine. Your trick worked.”

“I’m glad,” Whittney said with a kind smile.

Lake tried on several more clothes, and some of them were handed back to the employee to be put away. Lake had liked them on the rack but on herself, not so much. Whittney paid for the items, and everybody was ready to go.

* * *

While in the driveway Jesse noticed the curtains moving. He figured his dad was checking the driveway when everybody got home. Another thing Jesse noticed was his uncle’s truck parked in the driveway. Which was definitely odd.

Although… Jesse _had_ been missing for three weeks.

The kids helped Whittney bring everything in, and Jesse was immediately greeted by his uncle.

“Uncle Max! It’s so good to see you again!” Jesse said cheerfully as he hugged his uncle.

“Jesse!” Uncle Max didn’t have much to say other than his nephew’s name. “Your dad already filled me in on some of the details.”

“That makes things easier,” Lake said then offered her hand. “I’m Lake.”

“It’s nice you meet you,” Max smiled as he took Lake’s hand. “I heard you saved Jesse’s ass.”

“And he saved mine,” Lake returned Max’s smile.

Max chuckled.

“Lake, can you come in here for a minute?” Stephan called her over after the introductions were done.

“Sure,” Lake joined Stephan.

“I have something to show you,” he said before heading up the stairs with Lake close behind him.

Stephan walked past the guest bedroom, and then past Nate’s, and turned into Jesse’s. He gestured toward the opposite side of the room from Jesse’s bed.

“What’s this?” Lake asked.

“Well, you said you couldn’t sleep in your old bed, so I got you a new one,” Stephan replied. “I made sure it could support your weight at the store.”

“It’s in Jesse’s room.”

“You two said this morning that it may help to share a room for a bit.”

Lake still stood there, unmoving.

Stephan patted the new bed. “Try it out.”

This is what it got for Lake to take her first steps into the room. She pushed her hands into the mattress and there was barely any give. Her shoulders shook and tears started to form. Stephan watched from a respectful distance.

“This is so stupid, it’s just a bed,” Lake’s throat was tight.

“Have you ever had your own bed before?” Stephan asked.

“Not a real one. Not one I can use whenever I wish.”

“Then it’s not 'just a bed.’”

Stephan breathed in and approached Lake fully realizing just how little kindness she’s known.

“Well go on, lay on it,” he said with a smile. “Let’s make sure I wasn’t lied to.”

But Lake didn’t lie down, not just yet. She let out a choked-up “thank you” first. The bed barely made a sound when she sat on it.

“You’re very welcome Lake.”

When Lake finally did lie down she found herself completely lost in the comfort of the mattress and staring at the ceiling, content. Stephan didn’t want to bother Lake with the other surprise just yet so he quietly left the room to let Lake take everything in. He knew it had been a long day for her.

While Lake was in the room alone she looked over at Jesse’s bed and started to feel a slight twinge of guilt. So much money was spent on a kid who stumbled into their lives.

Lake decided to not dwell on it for too long, for all she knew Jesse’s family was rich. It was a pretty nice house after all, and lakefront properties weren’t cheap.

“I need to figure out how to give back to them,” Lake said to herself then rolled over. “I mean yeah, I helped get Jesse home. But if my plan worked, and I did get a number then…”

Lake curled up in a ball deciding to not think too hard about what-ifs.

Things played out the way they did and it was a good thing.

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”

Or something like that…

After a sigh Lake debated going back downstairs and getting to know Jesse’s uncle, and feeling out just how much Jesse had told him about the train.

On one hand, an uncle’s a part of Jesse’s family and Jesse seemed to like him so getting to know Max would be good.

But on the other hand, ugh, more people. Lake had enough of those for one day.

Lake groaned and sat up.

“I really should talk to him.”

She took one more feel of the admittedly cool slightly-psychedelic bedspread and headed downstairs to meet up with everybody who was talking animatedly much like Jesse always did.

“Cripes, am I going to wind up like that?” Lake thought.

Then she realized.

She had already decided that living with the Cosay family wouldn’t be bad whatsoever.


	2. Chapter 2

Jesse woke up after a restful night of sleep. He and Lake were right, sharing a room was the right call. As odd as it sounds, hearing Lake’s snoring helped out immensely. It told Jesse that Lake was there and safe. Jesse took a quick look over at his friend who ended up sleeping on top of the covers and in the middle of the bed. Lake was always a restless sleeper.

After stretching out Jesse looked at his clock and saw that the time was a much more reasonable nine AM.

Which was apparently very early for what Lake was used to.

So Jesse got out of bed without disturbing Lake and went downstairs.

“Oh Jesse, good morning,” Stephan greeted him when he got down the stairs.

“Morning dad,” Jesse greeted him back. “Heading to work?”

“Yep,” Stephan replied. “I need to head off. Can you tell Lake that I have something to give her? I wanted to do it this morning but she’s still in bed.”

“No problem. Have a good day!” Jesse waved.

“Thanks, you too,” Stephan waved back before he left.

Nate was awake which was no surprise to Jesse, the TV was already on with some early morning cartoons playing.

“Morning Nate!” Jesse plopped himself down next to Nate.

“Morning Jesse!” Nate grinned, still happy to have his brother back.

They watched TV for about an hour before they heard somebody else come down the stairs.

“G’morning,” Lake greeted everybody in the room with a yawn, still in her pajamas.

“Morning,” Jesse returned Lake’s greeting. “Have a good sleep?”

“The best I ever have,” Lake replied as she sat down in the empty chair. She watched the TV for a little bit. “So what are you playing?”

“Animal Crossing,” Nate replied. “You run around collecting things, and talking to your neighbours making friends. In this one you have an island you can decorate and you can also visit other islands…” Nate looked disappointed as his words drifted off, “You…aren’t interested, are you?”

“Huh?” Lake looked over at Nate. “If I wasn’t interested I wouldn’t have asked.”

“Lake just always looks like that,” Jesse said cheekily.

“Oh!” Nate cheered up immediately. “So you collect things to sell them to Tom Nook so you can pay off your house and get a bigger one. People say that scorpions are currently the best way to do it but right now,” Nate held up his broken arm, “I’m having trouble catching them. So I’m constantly getting stung and passing out.”

“Animal Crossing is more hardcore than I thought,” Lake raised an eyebrow. “I think I remember the fishing being hard.”

“Well, it’s not hard, really,” Nate said. “But it’s easy to get nervous and reel in too fast.”

“Wait, you remember?” Jesse asked.

“Yeah, Tulip had the one on DS,” Lake replied. “She got kinda annoyed since the store closed so early so there wasn’t much to do at night.”

“What time did it close?” Nate asked.

Lake shrugged in reply.

Some more time passed as the others watched Nate play Animal Crossing, it was a nice relaxing game, eventually Lake got up and changed in her own room. Whittney still needed to tailor her pants so Lake decided to just wear more of Jesse’s old clothes, a polo shirt and some jeans weren't too bad.

When she returned to the others they had decided on what they’re doing for the day.

“We’re going to the park today,” Jesse said. “Would you like to come with us?”

“The park!” Lake excitedly exclaimed. “I’ve always wanted to go to a park. Run around, look at the clouds, climb a tree. And just feel the world with my own two hands.”

“Okay,” Jesse had never seen Lake so excited before. It was odd, but also heartwarming. “I’m not sure how different it would be from doing those things on the train.”

“I want sap-covered hands, real trees _ooze_ ,” Lake said in a way that was mildly concerning especially with how she clenched her hands with fire in her eyes.

Nate and Jesse exchanged a quick look. Jesse spoke, “Sure… we can look for a gross old sappy tree for you to climb.”

“Trees don’t normally ooze?” Lake asked, feeling mildly embarrassed.

“Not really…” Jesse replied. “Some do, but I think that’s just the sick ones.”

Nate nodded. “Yeah, I learned in school that healthy trees don’t leak sap everywhere.”

Lake visibly deflated. “Oh…” But it didn’t take long for her excitement to return. “Okay so no sappy hands! I’ll still feel the bark, and watch the sky from the top.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jesse said cheerfully. “We will eat lunch first though. But first first, I gotta go bathroom.”

One Jesse left the room Lake when back to sitting in the chair. Well, ‘sitting’ Lake reclined on it with her legs draped over the arm. Nate quietly played more Animal Crossing as Lake watched.

“Hey Lake,” Nate got her attention. “Can you... keep a secret?”

“Sure,” Lake shrugged.

“Okay, so, I want to talk about something serious but I don’t want Jesse to know.”

“Alright,” Lake shifted in the chair to a more attentive position. “Go ahead.”

“Jesse... got picked up by that train because of me, right? I feel really bad about that.”

“Why do you think you’re why the train came for him?”

“Because I failed the man test,” Nate couldn’t return Lake’s gaze. 

“That ‘man test’ is such bull,” Lake said grumpily. 

“Bull?”

“Yeah you know...” Lake moved her hands around a lot trying to think of a different way of putting it. “It’s a fat load of crap. Being able to ride down a hill on a filing cabinet doesn’t make you a man.”

Nate sat on the couch silently. “I guess... But Jesse did it.”

“I doubt your dad did,” Lake pointed out. “And even if he did; it doesn’t matter. The whole idea behind it is stupid. I’m going to be frank with you here.”

Lake inhaled. “If you really want to be a strong person, or a ‘man’ if you prefer to think about it that way. Then what you really need to do is not give into peer pressure. It’s okay to do things with your friends, if they’re doing something and you want to join in then that’s fine. What’s not fine is ignoring what your gut is telling you.” Nate faltered under Lake’s look but she continued, because in her opinion it had to be said. “If you have people trying to guilt you into doing something, and your mind and body are telling you it’s a bad idea then don’t do it.” 

“I guess...” Lake’s words were a lot for Nate to digest. “But I do still feel bad about what happened. If I didn’t fail then Jesse wouldn’t have gone away.”

“Look. I’m not going to tell you that you can’t feel what you feel because that’s not how people work,” Lake sighed. “But you shouldn’t be feeling bad you got hurt. Tell me, did any of those goons apologize to you?”

“No.”

“Then they’re the ones who should be sorry. You broke your arm and apparently they give no damns about it.”

Nate became quiet again.

“Sorry. That was pretty harsh,” Lake said.

“No... I think I needed to hear it. I did tell my parents a little bit about how I was feeling and they told me to not give into peer pressure. But I guess it just hits different coming from somebody Jesse’s age.”

“Heh,” Lake cracked a small smile. “That’s pretty standard parent stuff from what I understand.” Lake started doing a very thick Minnesotan accent, much like Tulip’s mom. “Now hold on bud, if all your friends were jumping off a bridge, would you go and do it too?”

Nate giggled, which made Lake’s heart feel full. 

“Is that what your parents are like?” Nate asked.

“I don’t have parents,” Lake replied.

“Oh...”

“It’s fine, that’s normal for reflections,” Lake decided to go back to her old sitting position. 

Though it didn’t last for long, Nate quickly went over to Lake and hugged her.

“What’s this for?” Lake asked.

“I just wanna thank you,” Nate replied. “And also, I realized that if Jesse didn’t go on the train then we wouldn’t have met.”

Lake gently placed her hand on Nate’s back. “You’re right. And for the record, your brother had way more issues than what happened with you.”

“He did?”

“Yeah trust me. It would’ve found him eventually.”

“To be honest, that sounds kinda scary.”

“It only comes to people with serious issues, you’re fine. For now.”

Nate took a step back. “Wait. For now?”

“Well I mean, things can change,” Lake shrugged. “But again, it only comes for serious problems not simple mistakes. If it did pick up anybody who made a mistake then there’d hardly be any people around.”

“I... guess.”

Lake put her hands on Nate’s shoulders. “You can’t go through life living in fear of the train. If it comes, it comes. As messed up as it is, the ultimate goal is to help people. In a lot of ways Jesse is better off than he was. He’s slightly traumatized but he learned some important life lessons. And the same goes for Tulip.”

“And you too?”

“Hmmm... Yeah, probably. Jesse taught me the lessons I needed to learn so that was more him than the train. But it did bring us together. So.... I suppose it helped? I wasn’t a passenger so it kind of didn’t care about me. But that’s a whole can of worms we shouldn’t be opening today.”

“I think I remember you talking about that a little.”

“You put that can opener away,” Lake said with a firm look, and for reasons far beyond her she booped Nate on the nose.

“Alright, I won’t open the can,” Nate said with a goofy smile.

He then went back onto the couch to wrap up his Animal Crossing chores for the day.

* * *

The lunch everybody ate was fairly light, Whittney made grilled cheese sandwiches, another one of Jesse’s favourites apparently.

The walk to the park was brief and nice. The real sun felt great on Lake’s skin, especially at the top of the hill on the way to the park. Lake made a quick request to just breathe it all in.

“You know, I never did take my time in nature before,” Jesse said. He looked up at the sky. “You’re totally right, the real sky _is_ different.”

“It’s strange, I can’t really sense heat that much, but I’m enjoying feeling the sun,” Lake said.

Jesse smiled warmly at Lake.

The three stood around for only a couple more minutes before finishing their walk to the park. Nate was practically bouncing as he was telling Lake all about the fun things he’s done with his friends. As soon as everybody reached the park Lake looked at the trees with a grin she pointed at the tallest one there.

“Oh I’m climbing that!” She said. “It looks nice and sturdy.”

“What about your sappy hands?” Jesse smirked.

“Hey if you see an oozing tree then take me there. I just want to look over everything right now.”

“Alright,” Jesse said with a shrug. “So you go off and climb, I’ll take Nate to the playground.”

“And where’s that?” Lake asked, Jesse pointed the way. “Got it. Meet you there!”

Lake ran off with a wave straight to the tree, she started off by feeling the bark as realistic as the train was, everything just felt different. A real tree felt rougher, Lake look at her palm and noticed a few micro-scratches had formed. She smiled.

Finally, a real life to live. A real life to call her own.

But risk was less real off the train, there were no flecs to worry about and falling out of a very very tall tree was still not a concern for a former reflection.

Lake started to climb up branch-by-branch the only time she stopped was to look at a small bird’s nest with a smile. There were no yelling southerners to frighten the mother bird. Lake decided to stay as still as possible hoping that the bird would pay her no mind, maybe think she was a statue or something.

Eventually Lake lost interest and moved on. She slowly made it to close to the top, stopping to sit down once the tree started to sway a concerning amount.

She breathed in the sights and fresh air while overlooking the park. There was so much activity, families playing together, birds chirping, the warm sun, and movement of the clouds.

It was nice.

* * *

Jesse’s playtime with Nate was interrupted as he looked in the tree trying to spot Lake in it. You’d think a shiny metal person would be easy to spot. But nah.

“I think I see her?” Nate said with a squint. “She didn’t make it all the way up.”

“Huh. The branches must’ve been thin,” Jesse said.

The two went back to playing, Nate’s options were a bit limited due to his cast, but he was still managing just fine. With a little help from Jesse, Nate sat on top of the monkey bars and caught up with his brother some more.

“Yeah so Ethan laughed so hard milk shot out of his nose,” Nate said with a laugh. “It was so gross! Oh! Oh! And also, we started coming up with our own card game because all the real ones are banned. It’s going to be so fun! I still have to make my cards though. Mom said she’d pick up some card stock for me when we’re out tomorrow.”

“Oh yeah, that’s when your cast comes off,” Jesse said, he realized just how much he missed and his guilt hit him like a ton of bricks. “I’m so sorry Nate. I shouldn’t have talked you into that stupid man test.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not though,” Jesse insisted on it. “I knew how dangerous it was but I still egged you on because I was a weenie.”

“You’re not a weenie.”

“No, I was though. I just let everybody walk all over me and you got hurt because of it. I was a bad big brother.”

“You know. I felt bad too.”

“But you shouldn’t have.”

“I did though because I felt like it was my fault you got on that train. I actually even talked to Lake about it. She talked some sense into me but I do still kinda feel bad.”

“I was a mess Nate,” Jesse’s eyes started to water. “You got hurt because of all of that, and you shouldn’t feel bad. I talked to Lake too though, and I think her advice applies to us both. We just need to try being better brothers from now on. Me especially, you didn’t do anything wrong. But, I think Lake’s point was that we have lots of time to get close again.”

“And feel less guilty.”

“And feel less guilty, yeah.”

The air became lighter between the two, they knew they needed to have that talk.

“You know, it’s pretty warm out,” Jesse said. “I bet I can track down some ice cream if you want. The cart should be around here somewhere.”

“Yeah ice cream!” Nate cheered, he almost slipped off the monkey bars and Jesse caught him.

“What do you want?”

“A fudgesicle!” Nate said with a grin, his choice was easy. “Will you get any for Lake?”

“I mean probably,” Jesse replied with a shrug. “I’ll yell up that tree and see if she comes down.”

“Yeah Lake’s been there for a while.”

“She’s one of those people who like their alone time.”

“Hm, alright, but first, can you help me down? I’m not sure if I can do it myself.”

“Sure,” Jesse quickly helped Nate off of the monkey bars.

Jesse ran to the tree Lake was currently in and shouted up it. “Hey! You want ice cream?”

“Heck yeah I do!” Lake shouted her reply down. “Give me a minute to get down! I’d probably scare people if I jumped!”

Jesse could have sworn he heard Lake follow up with “well, that would be kind of funny.”

“You wanna meet up at the cart then? Pick what you want!” Jesse continued to shout up the tree despite the people staring at him.

“Works for me!” Lake replied, Jesse heard her grunting as she quickly climbed down.

“It’s over there!” Jesse pointed in the direction. “Probably.”

“Got it!”

Jesse then walked off towards where the ice cream cart normally was, and bumped into the last person he wanted to.

“Heeey Jesse, you finally showed up again,” Troy greeted him with a slimy smile. 

“Yeah, I did,” Jesse’s response was terse. Being away for three weeks made him wonder how he could possibly have been friends with _that guy._

Troy pulled Jesse in under his arm. “So how’s your brother holding up? Still crying about failing?”

“Look, Troy,” Jesse jerked out of his grip. “I’m done being friends with you. You’re a bully, you and your buddies made fun of Nate when he broke his arm. That’s not cool.”

“What, you didn’t exactly run over to help him either,” Troy loomed over Jesse. 

“You’re right and I feel terrible about that,” Jesse breathed in and stood up as straight as he could. “And I never want to do anything like that again. I never want to be part of anything like that again.”

“Well look who grew a backbone,” Troy cracked his knuckles. 

“That’s right,” Jesse tried to sound tough. “While I was away I learned a lot about myself. And I decided that I’m not going to be a pushover anymore. Nate got hurt because of it.”

“So what? He’s a little kid, his arm will heal. Who hasn’t broken a bone or two?” Troy sneered.

“Falling out of a tree, or crashing your bike is one thing,” Jesse clenched his fists. “Doing some stupid ‘man test’ is another.”

“You did it too, and you didn’t fail like he did.”

“So what! The ‘man test’ is complete bullshit! I hated it when I did it. And I shouldn’t have had Nate do it. But I did because I was afraid of disappointing people. Well not anymore! I’m done talking to you.” 

Jesse turned away and Troy yanked him back and reeled back for a punch.

“Go ahead! Do it! I’m not afraid of you anymore,” Jesse met Troy’s eyes with a determined look.

“What, man you’re crazy,” Troy opened up his fist. “It’s not fun when you aren’t scared.” Troy shoved Jesse. “But you better watch your back. One of these days I’ll make you pay for ditching me.”

“Do that, and you’ll be eating through a straw for weeks,” As proud as Lake was of Jesse standing up for himself, she couldn’t just sit back and watch. 

Troy’s eyes scanned Lake taking in her borrowed clothes, and he raised an eyebrow. “Oh I see what’s going on here. You trying to be all tough for your _little girlfriend_?” Troy taunted Jesse. 

“No, I’m not just trying to be tough to impress her,” Jesse didn’t bother arguing the “girlfriend” thing, it would have led nowhere. “I’m serious when I say I’m not going to hang out with you.”

“Whatever,” Troy made a dismissive noise as he walked away. “I bet your mom cried when brought that tiny freak home.”

Lake shivered, filled with disgust. “Gross.”

“Yeah I don’t know why I stayed friends with him,” Jesse made a face. “He wasn’t always like that. I don’t think so at least.”

“What’s his name?”

“Troy.”

“As in, Snootily-Banks?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

“Maybe he’s just angry about his terrible name.”

Jesse simply shrugged, no part of him understood Lake’s hang-ups about a name born of love.

He led Lake to where the ice cream was always sold, and sure enough, the cart was there like it is every summer.

Lake looked at all the options humming in thought. “Drumsticks are vanilla ice cream under all that, right?”

“Yep,” Jesse replied. “And there’s always a little chocolate in the tip of the cone. That’s the best part if you ask me.”

“I think I’ll go with that then, it sounds good,” Lake spoke to the vendor. “I’d like a Drumstick. Please.”

Lake was handed her order.

“And I would like a fudgesicle, and one of those Spider-Mans please,” Jesse pulled some cash out of wallet, he thanked the vendor when he got his order.

“Oh, right, thanks,” Lake followed Jesse’s lead, it was a little late, but better late than never.

As the two were walking back to the playground Lake eyed Jesse’s ice cream. “I’m pretty sure I remember those never looking like the character.”

“And you remember correctly. I hope that one day I’ll get one that does.”

“It’s never going to happen, they’re mass-produced.”

Jesse put his hand to his chest with a wistful expression. “A man can dream.”

“Yeah you go chase your dreams,” Lake looked at her ice cream debating just opening it.

“Go for it,” it almost seemed like Jesse read Lake’s mind. “The only reason I’m not eating mine is because my hands are full.”

“Nah, I can wait. I think I see the playground already.”

Pretty much the second they arrived Lake ripped open her treat. And Jesse passed Nate’s to him and he did pretty much the same thing.

“Thanks Jesse!” He cheerfully said.

“C’mon, please, please,” Jesse pleaded to his frozen treat and Lake watched as the bag was opened. “Aw man.” The ice cream looked even less like Spider-Man than usual. “Meh,” Jesse’s disappointment was short-lived. “Still tasty.”

“Better luck next time?” Lake didn’t entirely understand why Jesse was so determined.

“Wanna have a taste?” Jesse offered it to Lake. “It looks goofy but it’s yummy.”

“Sure,” Lake had contemplated for a moment since Jesse had already eaten some.

When Jesse held the Popsicle up to Lake’s mouth she took a bite from it.

Jesse cringed. “My teeth hurt just watching that. Having metal ones is powerful.”

With a smirk and unwavering eye-contact Lake took a big bite out of her Drumstick.

“Noooo,” Jesse posed dramatically.

“You’re such a goof,” Lake said with a giggle.

The group finished off their treats and miraculously nobody got all sticky. Which saved some time before going onto the tire swing.

“Okay, you two get on first,” Lake said. “I’ll give you a push.”

The boys followed Lake’s instructions and she dug her feet into the sand and pushed the swing. It didn’t take too much effort despite being a very large tire. After it got a decent momentum going Lake jumped onto it. Nate had a great time with how high Lake managed to get the swing to go.

She took control of the swinging the first few times and then Jesse declared it was his turn. Although he did struggle to get the swing moving.

“You sure you don’t want me to take over again?” Lake asked.

“No I got it,” Jesse stayed determined. “The tire’s just very heavy.”

“No part of me cares if you call me heavy. You’d just be stating a fact. It’d be like if I got angry if you called me short. Why be mad about true statements?”

“Huh…” Jesse took a short break. “Well, either way, I’m still going to push the swing! Heavy or not, it’s happening!”

Eventually Jesse managed to get the tire to build up some momentum; he jumped on and kept it moving. Barely.

The next hour was spent doing various activities and when the mid-afternoon came the three walked back to the Cosay home.

* * *

Whittney cheerfully greeted the three when they walked into the door. Her eyes full of love as they always were.

“I have some snacks for you in the fridge,” she said, then she spoke to Lake. “And after you finish your snack I have something for you.”

“Oh, uh, thank you,” Lake was still adjusting to such generosity.

The snack Whittney had prepared was ants on a log and some cut up apple slices. The ants on a log were annoying to eat in Lake’s opinion. Celery was now on her list of foods she’d rather not eat again. It was stringy and got stuck between her teeth. But apple slices were always good, especially when the ‘ants’ and peanut butter got moved to them instead.

“You know…” Jesse said. “I wonder if Mrs. Graham is back.”

Lake nearly choked on her food. “I was _joking._ There’s no way that lunch lady I saw was actually her.”

“You saw a lunch lady!” Jesse’s face twisted into concern. “Oh no. Poor Mrs. Graham.”

“Whatever celery-related hang-ups she had can’t be nearly as bad as most passengers. I’m sure she’s off the train and fine.”

“I guess I’ll find out soon enough.”

“Soon enough?” Lake had a feeling what Jesse meant but…

“Yeah. I can’t miss the end of the schoolyear so I’ll start going back to school later this week, or next week. Depends on how we’re feeling.”

“Don’t feel like you have to miss more school than necessary because of me,” Lake said that, but she wasn’t feeling it deep down.

“I won’t,” Jesse said, but he was feeling Lake’s nervous energy. “My mom’s at home so you’ll have company during the day still.”

“Hey actually, what do your parents even do for a living?”

“My dad is a general contractor and my mom does a variety of things.”

“Okay,” Lake quirked her eyebrow. “I know this is coming from _me._ But your mom’s starting to sound kind of shady.”

“What!” Nate was quick to defend his mom. “She’s not shady! She just can do a lot so she does.”

“Hm, I can see why you thought she sounded shady,” Jesse crossed his arms. “My mom crochets, knits, paints, sculpts, y’know. A lot of things. And she take commotions.”

“I wish you just said that in the first place,” Lake grumbled. “I take back the shady comment. That’s actually really impressive.”

“You know… My mom would be happy to teach you any of those things.”

“Huh, I’ll definitely think about it. It’d give me something to do during the day… when you and Nate are at school.”

Whittney’s ears were obviously burning, she was sitting on the couch waiting for Lake.

“I have something you might like Lake,” Whittney said. “Come with me.”

“Uh, okay,” Lake followed Whittney to her bedroom.

“Hold on for just one sec,” Whittney said as she dug through her closet. “There’s a few things I want to give you.”

From Lake’s point of view Whittney’s closet looked like a disaster, but then again, so did Jesse’s. Both closets were filled to the brim with clothes and had bags full of stuff sitting at the bottom.

“The apple doesn’t fall far I guess,” Lake thought.

“Aha! I found it!” A bag crinkled as Whittney pulled a notebook out of it. She handed it to Lake along with a pen. “And here you go.”

“A notebook?” Lake looked at it.

“Yes,” Whittney went back to digging in her closet. “You can use it for anything you want. You can write a list of all the things you want to do with your freedom, use it as a journal, or even doodle in it. It’s yours, use it however you wish. But-”

More crinkling.

“-I would personally recommend that if you do decide to pursue art you draw in one of these.”

Whittney gave Lake more gifts.

“A sketchpad?” Lake quickly flipped through it looking at all the blank pages, and then took the pencil and eraser Whittney offered her. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Whittney said with a smile. “I used to be an art teacher and I always have extra supplies lying around. You don’t have to get into art if you don’t want. But I think it would be a help to you.”

“How so?”

“Well...” Whittney paused, trying to think of a good way to word things. “Art can be helpful for processing your feelings and be a creative outlet. It can also just be something you do for fun, creating things just feels good. If you ask me.”

Lake gazed at Whittney, her eyes calm but telling that she had a feeling there was another reason. “I see. I appreciate it. Maybe I will try; I’ve never actually done anything creative. Unless of course you count creatively finding ways to escape the flecs.”

Whittney shifted. “I also think that having a constructive hobby would help quell your destructive tendencies. You’ve been through more than anybody should and I understand why you have those feelings. But this isn’t the train and you could get into some serious trouble out here if you’re not careful.”

Lake smiled. “You’re right, I really should work on that.” Lake ran her fingers over the cover of the sketchpad taking in the texture. “And it’d be nice to figure out a hobby I enjoy. I’ve never had a chance to before.”

This was the first time Whittney saw Lake without a stiff jaw and posture. She actually looked like a kid.

“And just one more thing,” Whittney handed a black marker to Lake. “You should write your name on those, really make them your own.”

Lake did as much. She grabbed the marker in her right hand and started to write her name, L-a-k-e.

“Huh.”

The noise that came from Whittney caught Lake’s attention, she took another look to see if she misspelled her own name. “Ah crap.”

And Lake’s name was written completely backwards in large letters on the front of the notebook. It was spelled correctly! Just backwards...

“I guess that’s something else I need to work on,” Lake said, forcing a chuckle.

“I didn’t even consider reflections writing like that,” Whittney said. “I can help you out with that if you want.”

“I would appreciate it.”

“There’s also another matter,” Whittney’s voice rang with an authority Lake had never heard from her before. “I did some talking with people and they’re going to pull some strings to get you into Jesse’s school.”

“Wait, school?” the idea _had_ crossed Lake’s mind but she never gave it too much thought. 

“Yes, school, you’re a teenager and you need an education. So anyway, I don’t want you to make this decision immediately but the only requirement we’ll need in your case would be a record that you exist.”

“Makes sense,” Lake wasn’t completely sure where this was going.

“Right. So I would like to take you the doctor’s office to get an examination. I want to also get you a Social Security Number but I’m not sure how start up that process due to your lack of a birth certificate.”

“Okay, so let’s do it! Let’s take me to the doctor.”

Whittney gave Lake a once-over, her eyes didn’t feel judgmental, they never did. “Like I said, I want you to think about this first. Would you be comfortable with a full exam?”

“Well,” Lake’s stomach sank. “I’m honestly not sure _how_ comfortable I feel with being poked and prodded. But I’ve also been reflected in enough doctors’ offices to know that they aren’t so bad. And this is something I’ll need to do. There needs to be some record of me if I want to live a life off of the train.”

“Again,” Whittney’s voice and expression softened, “I want you to think about this first. You have plenty of time to make your decision. You won’t be starting until the next schoolyear.”

Lake straightened up. “No, I want to do it. My mind won’t change. I want to have a real life, go to a real school, and well, I’m not sure what will come after that, a job, probably. But- my point is, I want to do this.”

“Okay then,” Whittney was convinced. “I’ll call the doctor’s office and schedule you in. I’ll also explain a couple things to them. But Lake, when somebody asks where you’re from I recommend you tell them you’re from the Midwest.”

“Is it really that obvious Tulip’s from there?”

“Yes.”

“Alright,” Lake rubbed the back of her head. “If anybody asks, I’ll say I’m from Minnesota. I mean, if we’re going the Tulip route we might as well go all the way.”

“There’s also your name, you have a first one, but have you figured out a last one?”

“Nope, I’ll bounce a couple ideas off of Jesse.”

Whittney laughed. “If you think he could help.

Lake joined in on the laughter. “You’re right, he’s bad at coming up with names. But talking to _somebody_ will help.”

“You know,” Lake composed herself. “I really do appreciate all this. You’re really sticking your neck out for me.”

“Don’t worry about it at all my dear,” Whittney said with a warm smile. “It’s the least I can do after you helped Jesse come home. And now that you’re under my roof, and I know about what you’ve been through. I’m going to treat you as one of my own.”

Lake fought back her tears. “I…”

“You can talk to me about anything you want whenever you’re ready,” Whittney didn’t want to be too pushy and scare Lake off. She seemed skittish at times.

“Thanks,” Lake’s voice was quiet. “I’m going to go now. And talk to Jesse about my name.”

Immediately after she spoke Lake walked out of the room and dropped her new belongings off on her own bed. She paused and looked at it. Another piece of unimaginable generosity.

“How did I end up bumping into somebody with such a nice family?” Lake asked herself, feeling as if she didn’t deserve it.

Lake hunched over next to her bed, trying to calm down and gather her thoughts.

“Some people are just nice,” she told herself. “And Whittney’s right, I helped Jesse get home. That’s her son, it’s a big deal.”

Whittney’s words about treating Lake as one of her own replayed in Lake’s mind which just made things harder for her to fully process.

“I shouldn’t dwell,” Lake said. “It’s not going to help anything.”

Lake took a deep breath and walked into the living room where Jesse was lounging on the couch. Nate wasn’t in sight.

“So I’m going to the doctor,” Lake said with zero lead up. “Apparently I need a last name for that. I have no ideas.”

“Wait, why are you going to the doctor? And you’re asking for my opinion on a name?”

“Whittney says she can get me into school if I see one. And yes, I’ll probably veto it but we need to get the ball rolling.”

“You’re going to school!” Jesse said with a grin. “Is it mine?”

“Yep, it’s yours. I’ll be a freshman.”

Jesse hugged Lake. “You’d need a last name for school too. You know... I’d be okay with you being Lake Cosay.”

“I get the sentiment behind that, and I appreciate it. But I want my own name. Which also means Olsen and any variation of, is out of the question.”

“Tulip’s?”

“Tulip’s.”

“Gambit?” Jesse suggested with some hesitation.

“That is cool, I’ll give you that. But it’s more of a first name.”

“I know how you feel about Dracula...” A lightbulb went off in Jesse’s head. “Alucard.”

“Alucard is just Dracula spelled backwards,” Lake readied her finger for a good flick.

“Hold on, try it out first,” Jesse’s determination managed to stop Lake.

Lake sighed. “Fine. Hey... doctor I’m Lake Alucard.” Lake fell silent with an annoyed look on her face. “Screw you.”

“Huh?”

“That actually sounded cool and I hate it.”

“We’ll put Alucard on the short list then.”

Even after several more names were tossed out Lake found herself liking one stupid suggestion.

“I’m Lake Alucard I guess.”

“Wait!” Jesse had a dumb grin. “You actually really like that one.”

“I do and it drives me nuts. Congrats Jesse, you won me over on Dracula.”

“Alucard.”

“Yes, Alucard.”

By this time Nate was done getting his 3DS and a game out of his bedroom.

“Hey Lake,” he greeted her while playing. “What’d my mom want?”

“She just wanted to give me a few things,” Lake didn’t want to go too into detail. “A notebook, sketchpad, and stuff.”

“Hey don’t leave out the really exciting part,” Jesse said.

“Oh yeah, and I’m going to start school next semester,” Lake said. “Me and Jesse decided on a last name for me. So now I’m Lake Alucard.”

“That’s a cool name,” Nate’s eyes shined with pure awe.

“Well thank you,” a little brother was such a strange concept to Lake, but Nate was a cute kid.

“Oh yeah, my dad said he’s got something to give you after dinner,” Jesse said. “He wanted to give it you this morning but you were still in bed.”

Lake felt a discomfort in the pit of her stomach, as much as she wanted to stay with Jesse’s family all this generosity felt very wrong. “Oh, cool.”

“You know what you need to do?” Nate finally looked up from his game. “You should make a Mii on our Switch. Everybody in my family has one.”

“A Mii?” Lake asked.

Nate closed his 3DS, apparently he took it upon himself to teach Lake all about Miis. He picked up a controller for the Switch and turned it on. “We can also make a profile for you if you want. But for now, we can have a Mii.”

Lake watched as Nate navigated all of the menus, for a main feature of the console it sure was buried. Nate stopped at the point where the system was asking if the Mii was a girl or a boy. He passed the controller to Lake. She found herself waffling on it.

“I am a girl, but I don’t want my Mii in a dress,” Lake thought but part of it didn’t really _feel_ correct.

Deciding to prioritize aesthetic over anything else Lake decided to make her Mii a boy. The options were both varied, and limited. There was no ability to do grey skin, for one thing. So Lake opted for the lightest colour, but it felt wrong. She picked a few other things, eyebrows, eyes, nose, and so on. The hairstyle was weirdly difficult as there wasn’t a decent looking buzzcut option.

The clicking paused. “This human skin is getting me to debate if I should just go with the hair colour I had when I reflected Tulip.”

“It’s up to you,” Jesse said. “Out of curiosity though, what colour would that be?”

“Reddish… orange? Tulip’s a redhead,” Lake replied.

Jesse stared at her which made Lake mildly uncomfortable. “No part of me can picture you looking like that. Personally, I’d just go with what you have. You’re you, after all.”

“Huh, everything’s so simple with you,” Lake couldn’t help smiling, she opted for grey hair.

And then everybody took a final look as Lake shrank her Mii down a touch.

A silence stretched through the room, neither Cosay boy wanted to say anything.

“Wow, that looks really bad,” Lake decided to say what everybody was thinking. “Maybe my Mii isn’t surly enough?”

“You’re not _that_ surly,” Jesse spoke second. “We… can workshop this later. The most important thing is that you have one.”

“I think it’s the hair,” Nate said. “The colour’s right but the shape’s all weird. And you don’t have your cool eyebrow either.”

“Hey yeah,” Jesse had a revelation. “Maybe it _is_ the eyebrows. Your Mii looks meaner than you do. You usually look more indifferent than anything.”

Lake looked over at Jesse.

“…Or you just have one eyebrow raised because I said something you think is stupid,” Jesse added.

The Mii creation continued and it improved marginally but…

“Yeah, I think this is as close as we’ll get,” Lake said, she had a strong feeling that it was the skin colour that was throwing things off more than anything. She found herself _done_ with the process.

And Jesse could tell. “Yeah, you can never get them perfect. On the Wii you could do a lot more with the beards and mustaches but people were making some… inappropriate Miis so Nintendo removed some of the options.”

“Yeah, but I just wanted you to have a Mii for when we play games together,” Nate said cheerfully.

“So what games do you have in mind?” Lake couldn’t stay disappointed, not with Jesse and Nate looking at her the way they were.

“I wanna play Smash Bros!” Nate energetically said. “As soon as my cast comes off we’re gonna have a Smash night! It’s been way too long!”

“And then! Mario Kart!” Jesse was also pumped.

“Yeah Mario Kart!” Nate cheered.

Their energy was infectious, Lake found herself looking forward to game night.

“And then some Mario Party eventually,” Stephan said out of nowhere, startling Lake. “I’ve been missing it.”

“Hey dad,” Jesse and Nate greeted him.

“Hi Stephan,” Lake said after steadying her heart. A person shouldn’t sneak up on somebody like that. And they _especially_ shouldn’t sneak up on somebody who’s had a bad history with cops, and humans, well, pretty much everything that’s alive.

“Sorry I didn’t mean to startle you,” Stephan said. “I don’t know if Jesse passed the message along to you. But I have a little present for you.”

Lake wanted to say, “No more presents, please. I can’t handle this much generosity.”

“Sure, Jesse told me you’d give it to me after dinner,” Lake said that instead.

Stephan gave Lake a pat on the shoulder. “Alright, let’s stick with that.”

He went into the kitchen to greet his wife with a hug and a kiss. It was already almost time for dinner and Stephan thanked Whittney for cooking.

And once again, Lake found herself watching. Jesse was becoming more and more tempted to ask about that.

A half-hour later it was time for the family dinner, they all went into the kitchen and shared a nice warm meal. It was more food that Jesse loved, Whittney was clearly trying to make up for lost time. She prepared chicken breasts and a bunch of vegetables, a couple of which Lake couldn’t identify. They looked like… mutated broccoli. Like, little evergreens. The table was live with chatter about everybody’s days.

Though Jesse left out his confrontation with Troy in the park.

It was a big moment for him but Lake could understand why he’d gloss over it.

When his food settled Stephan invited Lake into the garage with him, he smiled the entire time.

“I doubt this will surprise you,” he said as he opened up a box. “I have a lot of old clothes I was going to give to my sons.”

Lake looked around the garage and saw a little workshop with various power tools. It was actually fairly tidy, there were only a handful of boxes which Lake assumed were full of old clothes.

“I was going to give this jacket to Jesse but… well you know him,” Stephan said with a chuckle, he held up a black leather jacket.

“Woah cool!” Lake happily took it from Stephan. “Ha, this was the last thing I expected.”

“I… had a rebellious phase for a little while,” Stephan looked away from Lake while rubbing the back of his neck. “I hope it fits you alright.”

“And you wanted to give this to Jesse?” Lake said as she put on the jacket, it looked kind of silly when paired with the polo shirt she had borrowed from Jesse. The jacket was large, as predicted. But it still suited Lake, she couldn’t stop grinning.

“You look good,” Stephan couldn’t help grinning along with Lake.

“Thank you,” Lake said with a slight blush. “I can see why you didn’t give this to Jesse. He’s not really the type.”

“You’re right about that,” Stephan laughed. “I’m glad I found somebody to give it to. I was debating donating it, but a part of me was hoping to see it go to a good home.”

“I might have to wear it when I go out tomorrow.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I’m seeing a doctor so I can go to school. Whittney said she pulled some strings. I’m not sure exactly what she meant but who am I to question it?”

“I know what she meant. Whittney’s good at making friends and she was pretty close to all her coworkers.”

“Jesse really takes after her, doesn’t he?”

“That he does,” Stephan sounded tired.

“Yeah I wouldn’t worry, he knows better now,” Lake tried to cheer Stephan up.

Stephan gave Lake a small smile. “I’m glad; I was starting to worry about him. And then… he disappeared.”

“When he got onto the train,” Lake finished Stephan’s thought. “And that’s why I know he’ll be more careful now. The train fixes problems passengers have.”

“I hope you’re right. I don’t want to see Jesse or Nate get hurt again.”

“Well,” Lake smirked with her hands on her hips. “He’s going to make you proud soon enough.”

“Hm,” Stephan raised an eyebrow. “Something happened today, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, but that’s up to Jesse to tell you.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Stephan gave Lake one of his loving back pats before he started walking out of the garage.

But Lake, found that she couldn’t just let him leave like that. She hugged him.

With a surprised chuckle Stephan returned the hug.

“Thanks again for everything,” Lake said when she ended the hug.

“You’re very welcome,” Stephan said, he fought an urge to pat Lake’s head. “Was it the jacket?”

“It was the jacket,” Lake joked back.

Lake debating immediately going upstairs to her and Jesse’s room, but she also wanted to show her new jacket off to Jesse. In the end, Lake decided to show off.

“Awesome!” Jesse had the same reaction Lake did. “Now you just need to pair it up with a cooler shirt.”

“Hey this is your dorky polo,” Lake said supressing a laugh.

“You didn’t have to wear it,” Jesse raised an eyebrow in a very Lake-like move. “At least I got you to untuck it.”

Lake pushed Jesse’s shoulder with a laugh. “I hate to admit it but yeah, I _did_ look like a nerd.”

“See I know a thing or two about fashion.”

“Oh that’s rich coming from Mr. Canadian Tux. Why do you have so many jean jackets anyway?”

“I like them, and sometimes I wear something other than my letterman.”

“You’re such a nerd.”

Jesse shrugged. “You’re friends with me, so aren’t you a nerd by association?”

“Fuck,” Lake looked Jesse dead in the eyes. “You.”

“You can’t keep denying it,” Jesse shook with barely contained laughter.

“Oh just you watch!” Lake found herself barely holding it together. “I reflected somebody who went to a scientific odyssey every year, and managed to be cool. There’s no way you can drag me down into your nerdiness.”

All Jesse did was look at Lake, and she finally lost it. They both found themselves doubled-over in laughter.

It felt good.

“You’re losing your touch,” Jesse said between chuckles. “That was the shortest argument we ever had.”

“What can I say, you grew on me,” Lake said with a goofy smile. “Alright, I’m gonna head up to our room. There’s some stuff I want to do. But first, do you have some old school stuff I could borrow?”

“Old school stuff?” Jesse asked.

“Yeah you know, like… a student handbook? And a list of classes? Look, I barely know what schools give out at the start of a year.”

“Yeah, they’re in the top drawer of my desk.”

“Cool, thanks. Bye.”

“Alright, see you later,” Jesse waved at Lake.

The rest of the family also waved at Lake before she left.

Once Lake got into the room she looked at her bed and didn’t find herself filled with as much guilt as before. And she still felt fine as she looked at the notebook and sketchpad.

Lake took off her new jacket and draped it over a chair. Then she grabbed the student handbook and list from Jesse’s desk and lied down on her bed and thought about what to put in her notebook. Whittney was right, it would be nice to write down some plans.

Although coming up with anything specific was slightly difficult. Lake decided to start by writing down her plans for school. It was the next step in her life and it would be good to start thinking about it.

And as Lake wrote she realized it was entirely mirrored from how a prime would write.

So Lake added “improve my penmanship” to the list.

“Thankfully Whittney said she’d help with that. Though my penmanship probably isn’t that bad for a reflection. It’ll just cause problems when a prime tries to read my writing.”

Lake had a thought. “I could take advantage of that and maybe keep a journal. It’d be annoying for an intruder to read.”

She found herself liking the idea and decided to try that out at some point.

Lake heard a knock at the bedroom door.

“Can I come in?” It was Whittney.

“Yeah,” Lake replied from her bed. 

Whittney stepped through the door with a concerned expression, she sat down on the bed next to Lake. “I feel like I overstepped one of your boundaries earlier. And I’m sorry.”

“Uh...” Lake didn’t know how to respond. “It’s okay?”

“You don’t need to think of me as your mother,” Whittney knew Lake was lost. “My intention when I said I’d treat you as one of my own wasn’t to make you feel like you have to do that. I just wanted you to know that I will treat you right.”

Whittney turned around so she could look Lake in her eyes. “A child needs a safe and healthy environment to grow up in and I want you to know that I plan on giving you that. Even if you do decide to leave us you’re welcome back any time, no judgement.”

“Oh no,” Lake couldn’t hold back her tears, she found herself annoyed because she had finally calmed down. “Whittney, no. You didn’t overstep any boundaries. I just... I have a lot of issues. And this is so much at once. Too much, almost.”

“You’ve known so little kindness...”

“Right. And, this is so weird. I feel like I got lucky, I just so happened to help Jesse out. I didn’t even start out with the intention to help him. I just wanted him gone so I could hang out with Alan Dracula.”

“Even if you didn’t have the best intentions at first you two bonded. And it doesn’t matter to me how your friendship started. It’s in a different place now and I want you to be safe and happy.”

Lake hunched over, getting tears onto her notebook. “Thank you...”

“I see you’re already using that notebook,” Whittney decided that maybe it was best to move on to another subject. 

“I’m writing out everything I want to do with my freedom,” Lake appreciated the subject change, when she inhaled she sounded very congested. “I’m picking what I want to do in school.”

“Oh!” Whittney’s face lit up, she looked more like Lake was used to. “You’re taking schooling seriously! I’m glad. And on that subject, I managed to book an appointment for you right after Nate gets his cast removed. We need to leave at seven.”

“Seven? AM?”

“AM.”

“Gross.”

Whittney laughed warmly. “You’re not a morning person, are you?”

“Not really, no.” 

“Well,” Whittney gave Lake a pat on the knee. “You’re going to have to start being one eventually. School starts at around nine.”

Lake groaned. “Oh well. I’m good at adapting at least.”

“That’s a good skill to have,” Whittney stood up. “I should let you get back to your work.”

“Wait hang on,” Lake reached out to Whittney then got off the bed and offered her a hug. “I never did thank you properly.”

The hug was a huge heartwarming surprise to Whittney, and she gladly accepted it. “You’re welcome Lake. I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow.”

“Yeah bright and early,” no part of Lake sounded thrilled.

“Good night,” Whittney said, she stepped back and gently placed her hands on Lake’s shoulder.

“Night.”

Whittney left the room and Lake went back to her writing.

* * *

About an hour later Jesse knocked on the door.

“It’s Jesse,” he called through the door.

“Come in,” Lake called back.

“I see you’re hard at work,” Jesse said with a smile as he walked into the bedroom. “How goes it?”

“Pretty good,” Lake replied. “I think I have my classes picked but they might change depending on how much I retained.”

“Can I see?”

“Sure,” Lake passed her notebook to Jesse.

“Huh, neat.”

“Neat?”

“Yeah, your writing’s neat. Both in that it’s cool, and it’s also way more legible than mine. I like how you dot your i’s. But you might wanna work on capitalization, you might get in trouble with a couple of our English teachers for that one.”

“Wait hang on, writing like that isn’t normal?”

“Well... I’ve never seen it before.”

Lake groaned. “Tulip...”

“It’s fine. I like it.”

“I guess it’s not a big deal,” Lake sighed.

“Wanna see my handwriting?”

“Sure, why not?”

Jesse grabbed some of his homework out his desk and handed it to Lake. She squinted as she read it which Jesse’s been noticing more and more.

“Wow that is messy. You’d make a good doctor.”

Jesse laughed. “Yeah it is pretty bad.”

He debated suggesting to Lake that maybe she needs glasses. But the timing might’ve made Lake think it was a joke.

“I’ll keep the lights on for about ten more minutes if you want,” Jesse said. “We should sleep soon.”

“Why do we need to go the doctor’s at seven AM?” Lake whined. “I like sleeping in.”

“Even when you have an appointment you have to wait sometimes. Booking one this early usually means less waiting.”

“It should be against the law to open anything that early.”

“Well, the office doesn’t actually open until eight. We just need to leave early because it kind of far away.”

Lake sighed. “Alright. I got it.”

She got off of her bed and grabbed her pajamas then walked to the door. “We should probably change, see you in a sec.”

One sec later Lake was back in the room and on her bed.

“Are you nervous about tomorrow?” Jesse asked.

“A little,” Lake replied after some thought. “I know there’s nothing inherently scary about the doctor’s office. And they’ll probably just measure my height, and weight and stuff. I should probably ask Whittney what all she’s told them about me.”

“Do you think it would cause problems if people knew you’re a reflection?”

“I don’t want to admit it, but the flecs might be right about it being good for not too many people to know. I hate their methods but maybe it might cause problems if every human knew their reflection was alive in there. Me wanting my freedom is the exception, not the rule.”

Jesse didn’t know how to respond. “So… um, would you consider telling your doctor? Being honest with your doctor is important and all.”

“I’ll have to sleep on that one. I probably will in the end just so they don’t start trying to figure out why I’m metal. Or think I have a never before seen illness or something. It’d be simpler in the end.”

“Makes sense to me,” Jesse rolled over onto his stomach. “Is it okay if I turn off the light now?”

“Go for it.”

With one little click from Jesse’s lamp the room turned dark.

“Ah shoot,” Jesse’s bed made a noise as he rolled over. “I forgot to set my alarm. We’re waking up at six.”

“Six! Why!” Lake sat up and glared at Jesse. “We’re not farmers.”

“Well we have to get out of bed, eat breakfast, change, I need to brush my teeth, and it takes a bit to do all that.”

Lake flopped back down.

Jesse got a distinct feeling that dragging Lake out of bed was going to be difficult.

“Night Lake.”

“Ugh, night Jesse.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised that chapter 2 would be a Nate and Lake bonding chapter but this went on a bit. So that's getting moved to chapter three. Which is also why the projected chapter count went up by one. I'm writing that bonding chapter! And it's going to be cute!


	3. Chapter 3

Jesse groaned as he turned off his alarm clock. Not even he liked waking up at six in the morning. With a yawn he got out of bed and looked at Lake.

He weighed his options for waking up Lake. Staring at her would work but he didn’t want to scare her. But grabbing Lake’s shoulder ended poorly the last time Jesse tried.

Unsurprisingly, considering...

So Jesse settled on an annoying technique.

“Hey wake up lazy bones,” Jesse said as he poked Lake’s cheek.

Lake grunted as she slapped Jesse’s hand away in her sleep.

“Come on… wake up,” Jesse poked Lake some more.

His hand got another slap and Lake rolled over.

Jesse grabbed a ruler from his desk and started poking Lake in the shoulder with it. At least if she grabbed that he could let go of it.

“Stop,” Lake grumbled and she finally woke up. “Why are you being so annoying?”

“It’s six, time to get up.”

“Fiiine,” Lake groaned. “At least you don’t seem thrilled either.”

“Nah, even this early is pushing it for me. We can always take a nap in the afternoon.”

“Good.”

Lake groggily headed straight to the living room to curl on up the couch for a bit and Nate was already there. He was rubbing the sleeps out of his eyes while staring at the TV. Lake wasn’t sure if he was actually watching it or not.

“Morning,” she said with a big yawn.

“Morning,” Nate caught Lake’s yawn.

“What are you watching?”

“I have absolutely no idea. I’m never awake this early.”

“Just staring?”

“Just staring.”

Lake and Nate both blankly stared at the moving colours on the TV until Whittney came into the room and wished them a good morning.

“Are you excited to get your cast taken off?” she asked Nate.

“Yeah!” Nate replied. “Me, Jesse, and Lake are all playing Smash Bros. tonight!”

“That sounds fun,” Whittney said then she noticed Lake dozing off. “Wake up. We’ll be eating breakfast soon.”

“I don’t really wanna eat,” Lake mumbled.

“But breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” Nate said, obviously repeating what his mom’s always told him.

“That’s nice. I don’t need to eat,” Lake said barely fighting her heavy eyelids.

“Yeah that’s true,” Jesse came into the living room mid-conversation. “But you still can’t sleep. I had a hard enough time getting you up the first time.”

Lake groaned.

“Wow you really adapted quickly,” Jesse said with a laugh. “But then again, even on the train it took a while for you really perk up when we first woke up.”

“How are you like this?” Lake asked. “You always woke up ready to take on the world.”

“Well, I’ve just always been a morning person,” Jesse replied with a shrug.

“It’s true,” Whittney chimed in, then she added with a laugh. “When he was a kid every holiday Jesse would always come and wake me and Stephan up. Nate doesn’t do that though.”

Lake looked over at Nate who had dozed off, she jabbed her finger at him. “How come he’s allowed to sleep?”

“He isn’t,” Whittney shook Nate on the shoulder. “You gotta wake up and have breakfast.”

“Alright,” Nate slowly slid off of the couch and walked towards the kitchen to pour himself a bowl of cereal.

“I’ll just have whatever you’re having,” Jesse said as he followed his brother. “Lake, you coming with us?”

“Alright, alright,” Lake finally gave in. “I can do a bowl of cereal.”

The cereal was a very sugary one, full of dried marshmallows. Lake found herself wondering how good that actually was for “the most important meal of the day.” But she wasn’t complaining, it wasn’t too bad. It’d be good without milk; all that did was make things soggy.

After breakfast everybody got ready to leave. Lake decided to wear one of her new tank tops, and pants. Whittney had finished tailoring them and they were the perfect length.

Not that anybody could really tell because Lake tucked her pants into her boots. But it was nice to have ones that fit.

Everybody loaded up into the car and Whittney drove away.

* * *

Jesse wasn’t surprised when Lake fell asleep in the car, but what did surprise him was Nate flopped over and sleeping with his head on her shoulder.

“Mom, look,” Jesse pointed to them with a grin, and saw Whittney smile in the rear-view mirror. Then he sighed. “Now to wake Lake up.”

He went with his usual technique of poking Lake in the cheek. After a few hand slaps Lake woke up and glared at Jesse.

“We’re here,” he said.

Surprisingly Nate slept through the process of waking Lake up. So she woke him up, the same way she saw Whittney do earlier.

The kids sat down in the waiting chairs at the doctor’s office as Whittney picked up a clipboard for Lake. She down with it and a pen and stated to fill it out.

“Are you sure you want to go with Lake Alucard?” Whittney asked her. “And what about your middle name?”

“Yeah, I think it sounds cool,” Lake replied. “And I didn’t think of a middle name. Let’s go with Gambit.”

“Are you positive?”

“Absolutely.”

Whittney wrote down Lake’s name with a barely noticeable sigh. “Height?”

“It’s been a while since Tulip’s was last measured. So I don’t know.”

“Weight?”

“Hundreds of pounds, probably.”

“Hmm… I’ll just leave those blank. Blood type?”

“I’m not even sure I have blood.”

“That’ll be left blank too. Birthday?”

Lake had to think about that one. “Logically, it’d be the same as Tulip’s, March 3rd. But I’m not sure if I want to go with that.”

“What do you want to go with?” Jesse asked.

“The day I started living my own life,” Lake replied. “Which was around April 4th I’m not entirely sure the exact date. But I like the aesthetic of 4/4.”

“That’s a lovely birthday,” Whittney said. “Do you want me to write that down?”

“Thanks, and yeah, I would,” Lake replied.

“Wait...” Jesse counted on his fingers. “March comes before April. So that means Tulip had her birthday on the train. Did it do anything special for her?”

“Yeah,” Lake replied. “She got a birthday car, it was full of cake and balloons and also had a disconcerting clown.”

“Disconcerting clown?”

“Uh, yep, so if the internet is to be believed being afraid of clowns is _in_ right now. But trust me when I say this, that clown was creepy. He never stopped smiling, and I don’t mean a normal smile or a clown smile either, I mean it was way too big and he had far too many teeth. His mouth also never moved; even when he talked.”

“That is creepy.”

“He made balloon animals-”

“-Oh! That’s not so bad. I like balloon animals.”

“These ones wailed out an off-key version of Happy Birthday. Kinda like one of those talky-dolls that’s low on batteries.”

Jesse shuddered. “Okay yeah, back to thinking that clown’s creepy.”

“Seeing that clown is one of two times I broke character.”

“Broke character?” Whittney asked.

“Reflecting a person is just acting at the end of the day,” Lake replied.

“Acting huh?” Jesse started to think.

“I know what you’re about to suggest, and no. I’m not joining the drama club. I’ve had enough acting for one lifetime thank you.”

“Okay but, acting out a script is different than acting out somebody’s whole life.”

“The answer’s still the same.”

“Alright,” Jesse decided it was best not to push it. “So back to the clown.”

“Yeah so, if one of the balloon animals popped it screamed. That was probably the worst part. Well, for me anyway.”

“You know, I actually like clowns. But... if I had to see that one, I’d definitely have a fear of them.”

“I wouldn’t blame you. There were a ton of mirrors in there so I had a bunch of clowns wigging me out. I almost peaced out and gambled on getting refurbished.”

“Refurbished?” Nate asked, looking up from his comic book.

“That’s what I call it when a reflection’s memory gets wiped and they get a new prime,” Lake replied.

Nate made a face and went back to reading his comic. “That doesn’t sound fun.”

“It’s not,” Lake looked a different kind of tired from earlier. “So, uh, Nate. What are you reading?”

An awkward topic change, but it got the point across.

And Nate didn’t mind, he repositioned himself so Lake could take a look. “It’s one of the Steven Universe comics. Do you know that show?”

“Only extremely vaguely.”

“I think you’d like it, it’s about the Crystal Gems. They saved the Earth from other Gems who wanted to use up all its resources which would kill all the life on the planet. There was this really long war. There’s more to the story but that’s pretty major spoilers. Up until the last season the story was about Steven saving the day though love and compassion. You might want to watch it.”

“Huh, I’m actually interested now. I’m guessing this comic doesn’t cover the war though.”

“Nah, it’s all fun side-stories.”

“Hair, grey,” Whittney went back to filling out the form. “Lake, can you look up for a second?”

“Sure?” Lake did so, and Whittney stared into her eyes.

“Eyes, black. So Lake, this is a question more about Tulip than you.”

Whittney passed the clipboard to Lake.

“Ah, that. None of those apply,” Lake replied as she passed the clipboard back to Whittney. “Tulip’s family isn’t actually religious, they just do the Christmas thing because it’s a fun holiday. And they’re like, Scottish or Irish or something, I’m not completely sure.”

“Thank you,” and with that Whittney brought the clipboard to the desk.

“Nathan Cosay.”

About five minutes later his name was called and Whittney walked with him into the back room, but not before Nate dropped his comic off with Lake so she could read it.

“So what do I do when my name gets called?” Lake asked, she opened the comic and went back to the page Nate left off on.

“You just follow the nurse,” Jesse replied, he watched Lake and she shifted around in her chair. “Starting to feel nervous?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll be fine,” Jesse wanted to hold Lake’s hand but it was currently full. “My mom already filled Dr. Kurtis in. She knows you’re metal, not _why_ , but she knows you are.”

“Great.”

“Have you decided if you’re going to tell her you used to be a reflection?”

“I’ll play it by ear.”

“Alright.”

“Lake Alucard,” her name was finally called out, before Nate and Whittney got back.

Lake got up and followed the nurse and was led into an empty room, it looked like every doctor’s office Lake had seen. She sat in one of the chairs and waited.

Dr. Kurtis walked into the room, she was an older woman, somewhere around sixty. “Good morning. Lake, right?”

“Uh, yeah, I’m Lake,” she stood up awkwardly. “Good morning.”

“I’m Dr. Kurtis,” she introduced herself and offered her hand, Lake shook it. “Now if you could take your boots off and hop on that table we can get started.”

Lake did just that, and waited for Dr. Kurtis to give more instruction.

“Whittney already told me a little bit about you,” she said as she flipped through the clipboard. “We have some unknowns on here. I’d like to start off by taking your blood pressure.”

“Okay?” Lake looked at Dr. Kurtis, unsure. “I’m actually not sure if I have blood.”

Dr. Kurtis made a noise. “I’m sure you do. You have a heart so you must have blood. It just may be difficult to get to.”

She wrapped a cuff around Lake’s arm and started to inflate it. But the reading didn’t change. “Huh. I probably should have expected that. Your skin appears to be too hard to get a reading from.”

“Yeah I figured as much.”

“So… you don’t have a blood type listed. But, I’m not sure how we could test that either…”

“I’d personally prefer it if you didn’t. The only way you could access any veins I might have would be to drill into me and I don’t heal. Like, that hole would permanently be there.”

“Let’s just put a not applicable there too,” Dr. Kurtis was taking everything in stride which Lake appreciated. She grabbed her stethoscope.

Lake knew where this was headed. “Careful, I might be cold,” she said with a nervous chuckle.

“What?” Dr. Kurtis lost her composure with a small laugh.

“I know doctors usually warn about the stethoscope being cold and I thought it would be funny if I did. Because you know, metal and all.”

“Are you nervous?” Dr. Kurtis asked, trying to regain her composure.

“A little, yeah. This is my first time seeing a doctor.”

“Don’t worry, this is all routine. Now I need you to untuck your shirt,” Dr. Kurtis put her stethoscope on Lake’s chest and took a listen. “Hm.” She moved it around a bit trying to find a heartbeat, and eventually did, but closer to the right side of Lake’s chest. “Well, we know for sure that you have a heart now. The placement is slightly unusual however.”

Lake really wasn’t surprised that any organs she had were mirrored from a prime’s.

“Now I’m going to listen to your lungs,” Dr. Kurtis said, she put the stethoscope on Lake’s back. “Breathe in.” Lake inhaled. “And breathe out.” Lake exhaled. “Good.”

They did that a few more times and Dr. Kurtis made an intrigued sound.

“What is it?” Lake asked.

“Well, I’m not really sure why your skin is metal but it seems to have also affected your lungs,” Dr. Kurtis replied, trying to think of a good way of phrasing things. “They almost sound like foil. But beyond that, you do seem to have a slight breathing irregularity.”

Again, Lake wasn’t surprised.

“My whole body is metal,” she said.

“Do you know why that is?”

The question was finally asked, a part of Lake was hoping it wouldn’t be.

“So… this is going to sound crazy,” Lake decided to just go through with it. “Reflections are actually alive, and I used to be one. We’re all metal. So my heart being on the wrong side of my body actually makes a lot of sense since I’m a mirror image of somebody.”

“I see… give me just one second,” Dr. Kurtis walked out of the room.

“Oh geeze,” Lake felt a strong discomfort in the pit of her stomach. “Did I screw up? Am I going to be hunted down again?”

Her heart pounded in her ears.

Then, Dr. Kurtis returned looking mildly confused.

“I talked to Whittney,” she said. “I’ve known her for many years, I’ve treated both of her sons for their whole lives. And I trust her. She confirmed what you said. And I’m having some trouble wrapping my head around it. But… I suppose this means we currently have nothing to worry about. Let’s get back to our exam.”

“You’re just going to believe me? Just like that?” Lake asked as she watched Dr. Kurtis grab an otoscope.

“I’m standing here next to a patient made out of metal,” Dr. Kurtis replied as she popped a cap onto the device. “I’ve never heard of any condition which causes that. So I’m inclined to believe both you, and Whittney. And of course there was Jesse who also vouched for you, and that boy can’t lie.”

“Oh, okay then,” Lake was still unsure, things were going a bit _too_ smoothly.

Dr. Kurtis looked into Lake’s ear. “This looks fairly normal. Nothing to worry about in here. I’m going to look at your throat and mouth next.”

A tongue depressor was grabbed from a jar on the counter. “Say ah.”

Lake followed the instructions and Dr. Kurtis made another sound.

“I’m sorry, I’m just finding this very interesting,” Dr. Kurtis said. “Your throat does look good. So now we’ll have you hop off the table so I can measure your height and weight.”

Lake climbed off of the table and then Dr. Kurtis led her to the scales. A passing nurse’s eyes lingered on her for a moment.

“Just step on up, and stand up straight,” Dr. Kurtis started off by measuring Lake’s height. “Let’s see, you’re about four-foot ten and a half.”

“Wait, what? Am I really that small?”

“I’m sure you’re still growing,” Dr. Kurtis confirmed things while making it official on the clipboard. “Now step on the scale so we can measure your weight.”

“I… broke the last scale I stood on.”

“Oh, well, you shouldn’t have to worry about it with this scale. The numbers go really high.”

Lake cautiously placed her feet onto the scale and it held up. Dr. Kurtis moved the little weights until it was perfectly balanced.

“You are…” Dr. Kurtis triple-checked the numbers. “You weigh 369lbs. Huh.”

Lake snorted. “Okay I need to tell Jesse that one.”

“…I’m going to leave your BMI blank,” Dr. Kurtis ignored Lake’s amused snort. “Actually having one registered for you would just cause problems in our system.”

“I can imagine, being under five feet tall and weighing almost four-hundred pounds.”

“We can head back to my office now, and get you ready to go.”

Dr. Kurtis added a few more notes to Lake’s forms on the way.

“You appear to be in good health,” Dr. Kurtis quickly went over things. “Which is excellent. Your breathing irregularity doesn’t seem to be anything to worry about for now. Unless of course you find you quickly run out of breath when performing physical activities.”

“Nope, I can run for a really long time.”

“Do you have any concerns you would like to bring up? Any pains? Dizziness?”

“Nah, I’m all good. I don’t really feel pain like you do and I’m not dizzy constantly.”

“Good to know. So you’re free to go.”

“Hey thanks for being so cool,” Lake offered her hand and Dr. Kurtis shook it. “Bye.”

Lake walked towards the door.

“Have a good day,” Dr. Curtis said.

“Yeah you too,” Lake said right before she left.

“How’d it go?” Jesse was the first person to speak, he sounded nervous.

“It went strangely well,” Lake replied. “I have a small breathing problem but that’s not exactly a shocker for me. Oh yeah, you’ll like this, I weight 369lbs.”

“Heh, nice,” Jesse’s reaction was exactly what Lake expected.

“I don’t get it, why’s that nice?” Nate asked from his chair.

“We’ll explain it when you’re older,” Lake and Jesse said at the same time.

“And, how tall are you?” Jesse asked. “Five feet, right?”

“No,” Lake said with a sigh. “I’m a little bit under that actually. I’m four-foot ten… and a half.”

“You’re so tiny,” Jesse couldn’t stop himself, he smiled goofily.

Lake groaned. “Noooo, don’t look at me like that.”

“Don’t worry, you’re just a little small. But you still look tough,” Jesse failed to make Lake feel better. “You know… some people find short people more intimidating.”

“That’s great,” Lake sounded less than thrilled.

So Jesse decided to not push any more of Lake’s buttons. She was obviously disappointed by her actual height.

Jesse couldn’t help thinking, “So much for ‘why be mad about facts.’”

“Lake look!” Nate bounded up to her. “My cast is off! And I get to keep it!”

“Aw that’s great bud,” Lake grinned. “Congrats.”

“We’re actually going to go to the toy store to buy Nate a little gift to celebrate with,” Whittney said. “He did such a good job of taking care of it. And unlike a _certain someone_ he never got anything stuck in his cast trying to scratch an itch.”

Jesse scratched his cheek. “Heh, yeah. I did do that. But it was sooo itchy.”

Lake laughed. “Of course you did that.”

“Have you broken anything?” Nate asked.

“No,” Lake replied. “My body’s far too sturdy to break an arm or anything.”

She turned to Jesse. “So how’d you break a bone?”

“Running around the pool,” he replied with a blush. “You know how there’s that sign saying not to run? Yeah, I broke my leg on that sign.”

Lake doubled over with a guffaw. “That’s so completely one-hundred percent you.” She wiped a tear from her eye. “I needed that.”

“Yeah,” Jesse laughed. “Looking back on it, it was pretty funny.”

“Okay, it’s time to go,” Whittney said and started to walk to the door with the kids behind her. They were in her opinion getting a little loud.

* * *

Nate knew exactly where he wanted to go look for his toy. He had been in that store about a million times. Everybody followed him as he walked straight there. Lake had never gotten a good look at the inside of a toy store before. There weren’t as many kids as she expected. It was actually pretty quiet.

But then again, it was a school day.

“Oh! I love this show!” Nate looked at the Transformers Cyberverse toys with a shine in his eye. “The first toys that came out for it could have been better but we have these new ones now. Do you know Transformers Lake?”

“Uuuhhh…” Lake dug through her memories. “I think? Not these ones. But maybe some other ones?”

“Oh! Superheroes!” Nate ran over to them and started to tell Lake all about his favourites. “Look! It’s Wolverine!”

He picked up the toy and showed it to Lake, and she took a look.

“Yeah I know Wolverine,” Lake said with a smirk. “Short, angry, metal bones, he’s very relatable.”

Nate gave Lake a blank look.

She shrugged. “Well okay, _metal-plated_ bones.”

“Do you know anything else about Wolverine?” Nate asked starry-eyed. 

“Well, I know he was part of the Weapon-X program, his healing factor is why they successfully grafted metal to his bones, he’s also old as dirt, Canadian, and I’m irrationally annoyed that because Hugh Jackman is tall people forget that Wolverine’s a fellow shorty.”

“You’re so cool.”

“Huh, really,” Lake blushed and rubbed the back of her neck. “I thought knowing all that would make me like, the opposite of cool.”

“No way!” the fires of passion burned in Nate’s eyes. “Comics are awesome!”

“You actually know a lot about Wolverine,” Jesse said.

“Yeah, that brown suit brought back a lot of memories,” Lake said with the tiniest smile. “Tulip had this one episode on VHS, it was like, a failed network pitch or something. She watched it a ton of times after her dad first gave it to her. For some reason Wolverine was randomly Australian. Anyway, Tulip liked the show and did a bunch of research on the characters and franchise because she’s that kind of person. And I guess I ended up liking Wolverine. Tulip in the end wound up liking Beast more once she watched shows involving him. But Wolverine stayed my favourite. I also like Nightcrawler he was great in that pitch thing.”

“Would you like that Wolverine, Lake?” Whittney asked.

“Hmmm… nah, I don’t need a toy,” Lake replied, her hesitation was clear. “Thanks though.”

After everybody else moved on Whittney grabbed the action figure for Lake. Yeah, she didn’t _need_ it. But she clearly wanted it.

As everybody walked through the store Nate talked about all the things we was watching and playing, his voice full of excitement. Jesse found that he really missed how passionate Nate was about his interests. His heart ached, it had been far too long.

Even Lake showed interest in Nate’s excited ramblings. She was taking well to the idea of having a little brother.

Eventually Nate picked out a three-pack of Pokémon toys to bring home with him; the set was Alolan Muk, Pikachu, and Rockruff. When he wasn’t playing Animal Crossing he was playing Pokémon. Of course Nate talked all about what he was doing in his game. He wanted to get Jesse all caught up with his progress.

“Wow you’ve done a lot,” Jesse said. “You’re even the champion now.”

“You should see Gigantimax Gengar! It’s so cool!” Nate’s smile was positively sparkling.

“Oh!” Lake’s face lit up. “I know that one! Tulip looked at all the leaks. It is really cool.”

Nate smiled. “I got a shiny one! I joined somebody’s raid, and it was shiny. I was so scared I wouldn’t catch it! But I did!”

“Congrats Nate,” Jesse said with a smile, he didn’t know what a shiny G-Max Gengar even looked like, but he did understand the shiny part.

“Good work,” and Lake did too.

Nate giggled and moved on to the LEGO section. They were all really fun to look at, but Nate didn’t find any sets he wanted. Which was fine, he already got his toy.

Then it was time to go to the electronics section, which was quickly getting invaded by POP Vinyls. Lake had seen parts of electronics sections before thanks to the glass covering up the games, and the cellophane wrap on the game cases themselves.

“What systems do you guys have?” Lake asked.

“A Switch, a couple 3DSes, aaand, um, I think a PS3? We don’t really play that anymore,” Jesse replied. “By the way, you can play my 3DS whenever you want.”

“Oh thanks,” Lake said, she looked at the Switch games and realized that she didn’t even know what the family already had.

“We have the Steven Universe game,” Nate said pushing in front of Lake in his excitement. “It’s really fun. If you ever watch the show then you should play it. It’s kinda glitchy though.”

“Hm, what kind of game is it?”

“It’s an RPG, but the battles are more strategic! It’s hard to explain. I’ll show you.”

“I look forward to it.”

Looking at games was entirely window-shopping, nothing was bought in that section. The two toys there were purchased were rang up at the till.

“Here you,” Whittney handed Wolverine to Lake. “You clearly wanted this.”

“Oh…” Lake smiled softly. “Thank you.”

“So next we’ll be eating lunch,” Whittney said. “Jesse, you pick.”

“Oooh my gosh, I want a burger,” he replied. “But where to go?” He groaned in thought. “I’m craving some grease.”

Jesse continued to think as everybody walked to the car. “I got it! It’s not very greasy but there’s something there for everybody! A&W!”

“A&W?” Lake asked.

“Uh, yeah, they sell burgers there, and fried chicken, and chicken burgers, and fries, onion rings, a little of everything.” Jesse did a joke-whisper. “Don’t tell anybody else this but I like Chubby Chicken more than KFC.”

“Okay?”

“You’ve never had either before, have you?”

“No.”

“Well then!” Jesse took Lake under his arm. “We’re going to have to have you try both!”

“Alright,” Lake couldn’t help smiling. “I’ll try pretty much anything.”

“Pretty much anything?”

“If I don’t like the smell of it, then I probably won’t eat it.”

“That’s alright.”

The decision was made.

* * *

Lake stared at the menu steadily growing more frustrated as people cut in line before her. The words all looked backwards and her eyes kept wandering as a result.

She eventually sighed and leaned in to Jesse. “I can’t read this.”

“You can’t?” He asked and got a head shake. “Alright then, I have an idea.”

“Hey mom, can I go on the internet real quick?” Jesse quietly asked her. “Lake’s having some trouble with the menu.”

“Of course,” Whittney gave her phone to Jesse.

He quickly brought up the menu online and passed the phone to Lake. “Here you go.”

Lake looked at all of the pictures for something that appealed to her. She was finally able to read the text now that it wasn’t all lumped together. “Habanero is a hot pepper, right?”

“Well… kind of? I don’t find them spicy, but some people do.” Jesse replied. “You like spicy food?”

“Haven’t had it, and I’d like to try.”

“Sounds good to me.” Jesse passed the phone back to his mom.

Everybody placed their orders and sat down, they talked while waiting for the food to be delivered. Jesse was the first to open up his burger, a strong smell of condiments radiated from it.

“Want some?” Jesse asked and Lake cringed, especially when some ketchup dripped. “I’m taking that as a no.”

“Yeah I’m good,” Lake said as she opened her sandwich. “I don’t know what that one smell is, but it _really_ doesn’t appeal to me.”

“That’s fair,” Jesse took a bit bite out of burger savouring every chew. “I missed this.”

“Did you have actual food on the train?” Whittney asked. “I’ve never seen Jesse eat like that before.”

“Of course we did,” Lake answered the question as Jesse’s mouth was full. “Tulip would have died if they didn’t provide food. But there were no burgers or anything like that. Or at least not that I saw. But with infinite cars, there probably is some fast food in one of them. There’s a movie theatre car if that means anything to you. Some food sang about candy and pop in that one.”

“It’s true,” Jesse swallowed. “Well, I never saw the theatre car myself, that must’ve been before me and Lake met. But there was a pretty decent amount of food. It wasn’t super filling though.”

“Well, I don’t know how it works exactly but everything on the train is virtual, it’s all solid and the denizens all have their own lives and thoughts obviously, but I can’t imagine virtual food is particularly filling or nutritious,” Lake finished her thought before trying the first bite of her sandwich. “But it’s enough to keep the passengers alive so whatever.”

“So what do you think?” Jesse asked with anticipation.

“Uh, it’s good? I’d eat it again,” Lake replied. “I expected something a bit different, but I like chicken so I’ll happily eat this.”

“Oh good,” Jesse smiled. “We’ll have to get you something actually spicy at some point. Maybe get your mouth to burn.”

“I do wonder if spice would affect me like it would a human.”

“Hm…” Jesse pondered that thought. “Well, it’ll be fun to find out. Anyway, how do you like the fries?”

“Not bad I guess. I’m not sure if I’d want to eat these again.”

“Yeah, the fries here aren’t the best. They don’t represent the pure deliciousness of the humble French fry.”

“That makes sense, Tulip’s tastes in food were limited and she really liked her French fries.”

“Limited tastes in food, and yet, eats raw onions.”

“You have no idea how much crap she got from her friend about that one,” Lake said with a chuckle.

“Hey Lake,” Nate got her attention. “What do you mean when you say the train’s virtual?”

“Oh,” Lake put down her sandwich to make gesturing easier. “Well you see, there’s a bunch of orbs in the walls of the train. And these orbs control the environment. If you remove one then that part of the car vanishes or acts weird.”

“Woah cool!” Jesse had become fully engrossed in this conversation. “I never saw that.”

“Make sense,” Lake said. “The only reason I saw it is because while Tulip was on the train the steward, that tentacle monster One-One was in, was taking the orbs out of the cars and ripping out the wiring. I don’t know why that was being done. But it was.”

“Huh, cool,” Nate said. “It kinda reminds me of The Danger Room. But… with less danger.”

“I dunno, the train’s still pretty dangerous,” Lake said. “But for the most part passengers are fine as long as they don’t get off of the train. Although there’s still some dangerous shit even on the train.”

Whittney cleared her throat when Lake swore.

“Sorry,” she quietly apologized.

“Oh yeah, there’s those roach dogs as you call them,” Jesse said mid-chew. “Those get you if you get off the train.”

“They’re awful. Not only do they look really creepy since they’re roach bodies with dog legs, but they also suck out a human’s life-force. One tried that with Tulip the first day she got on the train. Ugh, and they have these gross tendrils too.”

Nate made a face. “That part’s creepy. I don’t think I’d want to meet one of those.”

“Smart move,” Lake said with some humour.

Whittney also looked uncomfortable. “Where exactly is this train?”

“Some wasteland,” Lake replied. “I don’t know where exactly it is. Which makes my idea to walk away from the train extremely stupid. Because I have no idea where that infinite he-“ Lake noticed Whittney’s firm look. “-wasteland even is. But then again, at that point I wasn’t even remotely thinking straight.”

“That’s when Mace was with you,” Whittney chose her words carefully so as to not cause trouble in public.

“Yeah.”

“It’s understandable you weren’t in your right mind,” Whittney gave Lake a soft look.

“So yeah, don’t jump off the train,” Lake decided to try to swiftly move on.

“The train’s really tall, how’d Tulip get off?” Jesse’s curiosity got the best of him.

“It stopped,” Lake replied. “A passenger got their exit. Though Tulip didn’t know what it was and it’s really terrifying when you don’t. Because this massive string of energy **_crashes_** into the train. And as you know,” sadness flashed on Lake’s face, “when somebody goes through the exit they disintegrate. So all Tulip saw was a giant laser, essentially, and a guy melting.”

“Yikes, that is scary,” Jesse ate his last fry. “I’d probably run for it too.”

“Hey you want some of my fries?” Lake asked.

“Sure,” Jesse accepted the offer with a shrug and got back to eating. “So you really don’t like these.”

“After we’re done eating I would like to go to the bookstore,” Whittney said, feeling that the kids have moved on with their conversation. “It is in the mall though. Would you be okay with that Lake?”

Lake gave it some thought, and then some more. “Yeah, I should be fine. There don’t seem to be many people out right now.”

“Remember,” Whittney’s voice was gentle, yet firm, “if you want to leave at any time then tell me and I can get you home.”

“I appreciate the offer, but yeah, we should try going to a mall before it gets too busy,” Lake said.

“We’ll go into the bookstore first,” Whittney said. “It has its own entrance.”

“Sounds good to me.”

* * *

Both Cosay brothers took Lake by the hand and started walking with her to the bookstore, they were very excited obviously.

“Okay okay, I’m hurrying,” Lake said with amusement. “So what are you guys so excited about? I know what books are.”

“Well obviously, yeah,” Jesse said. “But have you ever _seen_ the inside of a bookstore before? Also, this one has a café and everything there is really good, and the smell stretches across the whole store.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“I wanna show you all the books for the shows I want to watch with you!” Nate’s motivation wasn’t food.

“And if I want to look at other stuff?” Lake knew the answer but she wanted to see who would react.

“Oh course you can,” Jesse and Nate said at the same time.

So the answer was they both would react.

The first place they ended up going to was the one Nate wanted to visit, it was his big day after all.

“I need to go to the help desk quickly,” Whittney said.

“Alright,” all three kids said.

Whittney made a beeline to there.

“Do you have any books to help a person learn how to write?” she asked.

The employee did some typing and showed Whittney a few options.

“I was hoping for something for an older demographic. See, I’m currently fostering a teenager and… circumstances have made writing slightly difficult for her.”

Lake wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about Whittney’s explanation, but it was the simplest way of wording things.

“Ooohhh Whittney,” a loud woman said. “It’s so brave of you to foster right now.”

Nate did a combination of a groan and a sigh and tried to go back to looking at books.

“Woah buddy, you sounded like me there,” Lake looked at Nate. “You doing okay?”

“It’s... that mom. There are some parents who have been saying...stuff about Jesse and the rest of my family after he went missing. They think I don’t notice or understand because I’m a kid. But I do.”

Lake put her hand on his shoulder. “Jackasses, the lot of ‘em.”

Nate broke down into laughter. “You know, that’s a word my mom wouldn’t want me hearing.”

“Oh _please_ , I’ve seen a playground, worse stuff gets said on those.”

“They do.”

“But seriously,” Lake’s expression softened and she pat Nate on the shoulder a couple times. “I’m sorry you have to hear that garbage.”

“It’s okay,” Nate smiled at Lake. “Hopefully they’ll stop now that Jesse’s home.”

“Yeah hopefully,” Lake returned his smile.

“So anyway,” Lake sucked at topic changes. “What are you looking for?”

“There’s a She-Ra book out now, I heard it’s really good,” Nate replied with hesitation.

His hesitation didn’t go unnoticed to Lake.

“Man, are your classmates still teasing you about that?” Jesse almost sounded like he was going to fight some kids.

“I see, well screw ‘em,” Lake said with a huff. “Like what you wanna like.”

Nate looked between the two and smiled. “Well… I did find some classmates who also like it. That’s been fun.”

“Well there we go,” Lake clapped Nate on the back about as gently as she could although it was still enough to temporarily throw him off-balance.

“Here it is!” Nate’s excitement from earlier returned, he handed the book over to Lake and she squinted as she read it. “Do you need glasses?”

“What, no,” Lake snapped the book shut with a blush. “I don’t need glasses. Why do you think I do?”

“I have a friend who used to always squint when he read stuff, then his parents got him glasses and he doesn’t do that anymore,” Nate said. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, some people just need them.”

“Nate’s right, you probably do need reading glasses at the very least,” Jesse said with a shrug, he didn’t want to throw his little brother under the bus.

Lake groaned.

“You can still look cool and wear glasses,” Jesse said. “There’s all kinds of designs.”

“It’s not me being worried about looking cool or not,” Lake found herself mildly insulted. “It’s… Tulip-related.”

“Ah,” Jesse immediately understood. “So wait. You must’ve had glasses when she first freed you.”

“In my first bout of impulsiveness I broke them. They weren’t even functional anyway, they were entirely to make me look like Tulip.”

“Huh. Do you see okay generally?”

“I do.”

Jesse looked Lake firmly in the eyes. “You telling the truth?”

“I am,” Lake returned Jesse’s eye-contact.

And he was satisfied. “So yeah, I guess we’ll check out reading glasses and see if those help. Might as well start there.”

“…Fine.”

“For what it’s worth, nobody here knows Tulip so nobody will think anything of you wearing glasses.”

“That’s… true,” Lake found herself feeling better about things.

With that settled Nate moved onto manga.

“What’s this doing in the kids’ section?” Lake wondered out loud as she picked up a Yu-Gi-Oh graphic novel.

“Why wouldn’t that be here?” Nate asked. “Don’t they play card games?”

“Now they do, but this is from when there was a lot of murder, and people being set on fire, and people being set on fire and dying, and being mentally scarred,” Lake said. “And all of those things were done by the main protagonist. Also, weirdly pervy.”

“Wait seriously?” Jesse started to look over Lake’s shoulder as she flipped through. “Oh wow. Yeah… Nate wouldn’t be allowed to read this.”

“I’m curious now,” Nate said.

“Look, I’m putting it on the shelf and if you pick it up and read it, things were out of my hands. Alright?” Lake said. “If your mom asks I told you no.”

“Lake! No!” Jesse picked the book back up. “And Nate, please wait until you’re a little older to read this.”

“You’re such a stickler,” Lake said with a chuckle. “Are you planning on carrying that around the whole time we’re in here?”

Jesse groaned. “You have a point…”

“Don’t worry, I won’t read it,” Nate said.

That was enough to convince Jesse to put the book back down.

Whittney settled her business and rejoined the kids with a couple books. “Have you guys found anything?”

“I did!” Nate held up the She-Ra book with a shining grin.

“Look at that,” Whittney smiled back at him. “I remember you really wanted it.”

She took the book from Nate and added it to her small pile before everybody looked through the rest of the store. Lake looked in all the sections, she had no idea what she even liked in terms of literature. One would think she’d be into books about people overthrowing corrupt governments, Jesse even recommended a few of those, but Lake wasn’t in the mood for that.

So Jesse went a completely different route, a sappy romantic novel a couple of his friends were super into.

Which got him a flick on the forehead.

Although before giving him said flick Lake did show a little interest. She was probably just embarrassed.

“That’s okay,” Jesse said while walking with Lake. “I have lots of books you can look through, and borrow. You don’t have to find something today.”

“I suppose,” Lake looked down.

“And I have books too!” Nate also made Lake an offer.

“Aw thanks Nate,” Lake ruffled his hair. “I’ll take a look.”

While going past the sci-fi section Lake turned her head, practically backwards too as the group went by.

“Promise you won’t laugh, alright.”

Jesse put his hand to his chest. “I promise, and to go even further, I swear I won’t make fun of any of your interests.” He dropped his hand and softly looked Lake in the eyes. “I wouldn’t even think of it. Besides,” a shrug, “I picked out a romance novel for you.”

“That you did,” Lake double-backed and picked up a book. “I saw bits and pieces of this years ago and I always wished I could have seen the end.”

Jesse didn’t bother asking Lake if her earlier hesitance was a Tulip issue. He learned that it usually was.

“Awesome!” Jesse pulled Lake under his arm. “You can finally read it! Be sure to tell me how it was.”

“I will.”

The rest of the bookstore was largely unsuccessful, not even the clearance section had anything that Jesse found interesting and he _always_ found something in there. He liked to broaden his horizons.

Whittney paid for everything and then it was time to go into the attached mall.

Lake’s eyes moved around more and more as she walked through the mall, Jesse had no idea when it happened but his hand was firmly being held by her.

It seemed less like it was the people who were making Lake nervous and more the stores.

Jesse felt the pressure on his hand increase and Lake’s breathing was irregular; he gave her a soft look, she was starting to tear up.

“Remember, you can duck out whenever you want.”

With a sniffle Lake leaned on Jesse. “I think I’ve had enough.”

“Okay, I... I’m honestly not feeling okay either.”

His eyes had a distant look to them.

“I thought I would be okay,” Jesse continued. “But... I’m not.”

“We’re both messes.”

“Yeah.”

Whittney walked up them and discreetly asked Lake if she wanted to leave.

“I do,” Lake replied, her voice was the quietest Whittney had ever heard it.

“Okay,” Whittney gave Lake a kind look and wordlessly led her and Jesse out of the mall.

She decided that glasses shopping should come another day.

* * *

The second she got home Lake collapsed on the couch, she was both physically and mentally exhausted. Jesse followed close behind.

“Can you move your legs?”

Lake’s protesting was muffled by the couch cushion.

“If you don’t I’ll sit on them.”

“Go for it. It won’t hurt.”

“Come on couch hog,” Jesse prodded Lake’s calves. “You’re being rude right now.”

With an exaggerated groan Lake repositioned so she was sitting up with her legs curled into herself.

“You doing okay?” Jesse asked after he sat down.

“I’m so tired.”

“So am I. You… wanna take that nap?”

“I do,” Lake repositioned to give Jesse some space to lean on her.

To Lake’s surprise Jesse didn’t immediately join in. “Right here, huh?”

“I mean, if you don’t want to that’s fine, I don’t care. I’m sleeping either way.”

“Nah, I want to” Jesse leaned on Lake with a thunk. “You’re harder than I remember.”

“Then sit on the other side of the couch.”

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

It didn’t take long for them to doze off, their fingers eventually interlocked.

A few hours later Nate woke the two up, he said that dinner was on its way.

“Ah gross. There’s drool in my hair,” Jesse said pretty much as soon Nate woke him up.

“You knew the risks,” Lake wasn’t even remotely apologetic as she wiped her mouth.

Dinner that night was pizza, Nate got to pick. His idea of a fantastic night was pizza and video games with his family.

Which of course included Lake.

Nate got his Smash Night he was promised.

“Okay Lake,” Jesse smiled at her as she picked out her character. “Have you ever played Smash Bros. before?”

“You know I haven’t,” Lake replied as she looked at the roster, she reached the Dragon Quest hero and checked out his costumes, she stopped on the one with the orange bandana. “Hey wait a minute, I recognize this one.”

“Oh, cool, he’s pretty advanced so maybe you should use him later after you get the hang of things.”

“Fine. I guess… Sheik’s my second pick.”

Jesse wasn’t sure about that choice either, but Sheik required less resource juggling and menu management. “Sure, sounds good to me. So Smash Bros. is pretty simple. You have two attack buttons, one’s special attacks, and the other’s normal attacks which you can charge up into smash attacks.” Jesse blanked on how to explain how exactly to explain smash attacks.

“So you do smash attacks by kinda slamming your control stick in a direction at the same time you press the button,” Nate took over at that point, he demonstrated to Lake how to do it. “So we set up a name for you earlier as you saw. We turned tap to jump off because it makes it harder to pull of some moves, well in my opinion anyway. So you’ll need to press X to jump up onto platforms and attack.”

“I see,” it was a lot for Lake to take in all at once.

“You also use the shoulder buttons to block and do dodge rolls,” Jesse finished the explanation. “You pick up items with A and you grab people by pressing A and the shield button at the same time. Or you can use ZL or ZR. Whichever you prefer.”

“Seems simple enough,” the way Lake looked at the controller told another story.

Smash Night was a huge success, Lake had difficulties getting KOs with Sheik and she eventually tried other character, finally ending off with the hero from Dragon Quest VIII. She picked things up quickly enough. Nate was practically an expert and he did the best out of the three. Jesse also enjoyed some Smash Bros. here and there but he wasn’t nearly as practised as his brother.

Playing that game made the emotions in that mall feel like they were in the distant past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, hey can you tell I'm Canadian?


	4. Chapter 4

“Are you absolutely, one-hundred percent sure you’re okay with this?”

Jesse asked that about a billion times when Lake said she was ready to move her bed out of his room. Eventually Lake was convinced that it was Jesse who wasn’t ready so she offered to stay for his sake.

And was turned down.

But Lake made it clear that her door was always open to him.

Which is how Lake ended up staring at the ceiling in the guest bedroom for the first time in a week.

Not having Jesse nearby was weird, and the idea of sleeping suddenly became unappealing.

What if the nightmares get really bad again?

Lake sighed.

“This is stupid, I was the one who insisted.”

She noticed that she was tearing up and wiped her eyes.

“And why am I crying? Jesse’s closeby.”

With a groan Lake rolled over. She remembered what Whittney told her about writing out her thoughts to try to process them so Lake grabbed her pencil and notebook.

And couldn’t think of anything to write down.

So Lake swore and put her stuff away again and went back to staring at the ceiling. The darkness made interesting patterns appear in the old tile.

“Huh.”

Lake grabbed her sketchpad and decided to try drawing what she saw.

It was actually pretty relaxing and helped take her mind off things.

Eventually Lake dozed off mid-pencil stroke.

* * *

When Lake woke up the next morning her sketchpad was flat on her face and her pencil was god knows where.

She found herself wondering if she missed when Jesse went to school.

“It’s eight in the morning.”

Lake rolled out of bed hoping Jesse was still home.

“Morning Lake,” Nate was waiting on the couch with his backpack. “You’re up early.”

“Uh, yeah, so I’m guessing Jesse hasn’t left yet.”

“Nope, we leave kinda late when mom drives us. This is the first time she’s done it in a while.”

“Do you walk to school all by yourself?”

“Nah. Me and Jesse usually walk together. But for some reason she wanted to drive us today.”

“Well… I can’t say I blame her,” Lake finally sat down next to Nate. “I mean, Jesse did up and vanish for a while.”

“That’s true.”

“So what are you watching?”

Nate looked at the TV, it had a bunch of people in crazy costumes. “Let’s Make a Deal. They try to win prizes and avoid bad stuff called zonks.”

“I see,” Lake decided to start paying attention to what was on.

A few minutes later Jesse walked into the living room along with his mom, he was talking to her and trying to quell her worries.

“Oh!” He noticed who was on the couch with Nate. “Morning Lake!”

“Good morning,” Whittney greeted her too.

“Morning guys,” Lake barely gave them a wave, she was too engrossed in the show.

“It’s kinda weird seeing you up at this hour,” Jesse said with a chuckle.

“Nate said the same thing,” Lake jabbed her thumb at him. “Look… I just wanted to see you off, alright. It’s your first time going to school in a while.”

Jesse couldn’t help smiling at Lake who puffed out her cheeks slightly with a blush. “Thanks Lake. You don’t have to worry about me though. I’m sure going to school is like riding a bike.”

“I suppose.”

“But I will get saddled with a ton of homework,” Jesse sat down next to Lake. “That’s not going to be fun.”

“No doubt,” Lake leaned onto Jesse.

“At least I have some friends who can help me out if I have trouble.”

“Have you figured out what you’re going to tell people?” Suddenly Let’s Make a Deal seemed less interesting to Lake, however she still watched it somewhat.

“No. My plan was to tell the truth to my closest friends but the more I think about it, the more I worry. I don’t exactly have proof.”

“Should we figure something out before you leave?”

“Well…” Jesse considered things as he watched the contestant get zonk’d. “I don’t think we have time right now to do it. I’ll just have to hope I either don’t get asked, or I can come up with something on the fly.”

“That’s a terrible plan and you know it.”

“Yeah probably. I’m having regrets.”

“When do you leave?”

“In about ten minutes.”

“Yeah you’re hosed. Tough luck buddy.”

“Lake!”

“Alright aright,” Lake put up her hands. “Look.”

Yeah she had no follow-up.

“I guess… I could tell people I accidentally got on a train. That’s not completely wrong,” Jesse thought very hard about that.

“And why were you at the train station?”

“I was helping somebody out!”

“Okay, that’s actually believable.”

“I’ll tell them that I ended up shockingly close to the Midwest and that’s when I met you.”

“I’m still conflicted about the fact that it’s apparently really obvious Tulip’s from there.”

“I’m sorry Lake, you ‘ope’ and say ‘pop’ instead of soda. And I have literally never heard anybody say ‘cripes’ until I met you.”

“Crap.”

Jesse snickered. “Anyway. Winding up there would explain why it took me so long to get back. I’ll just say I can’t read a train schedule but you can.”

“Multiple people told me that you can’t lie, and they’re right,” Lake sighed. “But this nonsense is probably your best bet.”

“I’m sure it’ll work out,” Jesse said with a shrug.

Whittney looked extremely unsure of Jesse’s hastily put together story. But there was just too much that was unbelievable about Jesse’s disappearance.

And there wasn’t any more time to figure anything else out. There was a silent agreement in the household that it wouldn’t be fair to Lake to have her introduced purely as proof of the train.

“Okay, we need to get going,” Whittney said.

Everybody exchanged hugs goodbye.

“I’m sure everything will work out for you,” Lake said as her and Jesse hugged. “You have a horseshoe up your ass.”

Jesse sighed fondly. “I’m going to miss having entire days of you being a smart-aleck.”

“I’ll make up for it.”

“I bet you will.”

Whittney had to gently prod the two apart, she had learned that if left alone they could carry that back-and-forth on for a while.

Everybody waved as the group walked out the door.

Lake went back to the couch to try to lose herself in gameshows.

* * *

“Oh, hello Lake,” Whittney was surprised to see her still watching TV. The Price is Right was a little ways into the episode. “Are you planning on staying up?”

“Yeah, probably,” Lake replied, not taking her eyes off the show. “I’ll see how I’m feeling in the afternoon.”

“I’m going to go out and feed the birds and fill the bird bath. Would you like to get some fresh air with me?”

“Sure, why not?’ Lake got off the couch and followed Whittney around as she gathered what she needed, Lake offered to carry the bucket and it was accepted.

“So do you do this every morning?” Lake asked as she poured the water into the bird bath. The old water was gross and was dumped out.

“Every morning, the birds splash all the water out of here during the day,” Whittney replied.

“And what was all that in the water?”

“Dirt, mostly, I’m thankful that none of the ravens ate anything nasty in here. Sometimes there’s parts of birds, that’s honestly kind of sad to see. But that’s nature.”

“Ravens are basically big crows, right?”

“Basically, if you ever look at a black bird and think ‘wow that’s a big crow’ then it’s probably a raven.”

“Got it.”

“Do you like birds?”

“I think I do, when I went to the park I watched a few of them. I found a nest in a tree and watched the mother bird for a bit. Don’t worry, I didn’t scare her, birds don’t seem to notice me.”

“What kind of bird?”

“A… red kind? With like uh, a mohawk, I guess.”

“Oh a cardinal. We get some in my feeders.”

“So that’s what they’re called. Tulip’s not exactly an ornithologist so I’m not too familiar with birds.”

Lake noticed the way Whittney was staring at her, she blushed and looked away.

“Oh, sorry. I’m just used to my boys. I don’t think either of them know that word,” Whittney said with a chuckle.

“Yeah, that’s true,” Lake smiled.

Whittney pulled out a razor knife and cut open some packaging. She pulled a puck of seed out of it and opened up one of the bird feeders. “I have to replace at least one suet cake every morning.” She turned to Lake. “Another one of my feeders is empty. Would you like to fill it?”

“Alright,” Lake accepted Whittney’s offer, the container that was just opened contained a second suet cake. It was kind of greasy and unpleasant to touch.

While Lake was getting the food ready Whittney moved some of the partial cakes to a different section of the feeder. Lake put the new cake in the now-empty compartment.

“You must get a lot of birds,” Lake said while trying to get the bits of seed off of her hands.

“I do get a lot. But my birds are also little piggies, one of the ravens figured out how to open the feeder and stole an entire suet cake once. And one of the robins is now a sphere.”

Lake chuckled. “Borb.”

Whittney smiled at Lake’s goofy little reaction then took a look in the flower bed. “I have a few weeds growing, I need to get my gloves and pull them.”

“I can pull them. Just tell me how and what.”

“Sure, thank you,” Whittney crouched down. “You really just need to pull out the main root, it’s pretty deep so you have to reach down in there. These weeds have some thorns so be careful.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lake said as she reached into the earth.

Whittney watched Lake as she worked. “You really don’t feel pain.”

“Well...” the pulling stopped as Lake thought. “It’s less that I don’t feel pain. I just feel it differently. Like, when I fell from twenty-thirty feet onto a steel walkway I felt this dull... numb... offness in my shoulder. The same as when I punched a tree for a while. I always hear pain described as ‘sharp’ and I’ve never felt that. I felt when I grinded off part of my eyebrow, I don’t know if I’d say it hurt. But it felt... off.”

“I see.”

“Wait. I forgot, I felt a sharp pain when I got electrocuted.” 

“Hold on. Electrocuted?”

“Yeah, there was this map that only Jesse could touch and that jerk Marcy didn’t think to warn me about that.” Lake recalled something else. “And there was that time Jesse was all staticy and touched my arm. That hurt too.”

“I suppose that makes sense. Metal does conduct electricity.”

“Yeah. So I guess I have two types of pain I feel.”

“That’s really interesting.”

While Whittney was guiding Lake on what weeds to pull a neighbour jogged by like she did every morning.

“Good morning Whittney!” She waved. “I see you have a little helper today.”

“Good morning,” Whittney waved back, she touched Lake on the shoulder. “This is Lake, she’s Jesse’s friend.”

“Hey, morning,” Lake looked up from her weeding, and clapped her hands together to remove the dirt.

It was at this point that the jogger realized that Lake was metal, she tried her best not to, but she stared. “Now why aren’t you in school?”

Lake exchanged a glance with Whittney, neither of them had a good excuse so Lake decided to just tell the truth. “Yeah, I didn’t have a home so I’m not in school. I’ll be starting next semester. There’s no point in signing me up for this one; it’s pretty much over.”

“Oh,” Pity was all over the jogger’s face.

“Ah it’s fine, I’m living with Whittney and her family now,” Lake said with a shrug.

“Jesse’s always had a big heart,” the jogger said with her hand to her chest and what Lake had started to recognize as false-kindness in her eyes. She knew real kindness, and that wasn’t it.

Lake was about to chew her out when Whittney stopped her. “Jesse became friends with Lake on her own merits. He didn’t know her situation at first.”

“Yeah, he didn’t pity me,” Lake stopped herself from going further, Whittney stood up for her and she didn’t want to risk throwing away that good will.

“And I wouldn’t worry about school, Lake’s a very fast learner, we’ve been working on some the gaps in her education and it’s been going well,” Whittney spoke with a sweet voice but Lake knew her well enough to be able to detect some annoyance towards the jogger.

“That’s great!” The jogger said, Lake couldn’t help feeling condescended to. “Well, good luck with your education. I should get back to my jog. Bye-bye.”

After that she jogged away.

“Okay how old did she think I am?” Lake immediately griped to Whittney.

Whittney rubbed Lake’s back. “I’m so sorry dear.”

“There’s nothing for you to be sorry about,” Lake ran her fingers through her hair. “I should’ve lied and said I was homeschooled.”

“No you shouldn’t have,” a rare show of firmness from Whittney. “You shouldn’t have to lie about every part of yourself.”

Lake’s legs felt weak. “You’re… probably right.”

“Now,” Whittney patted Lake’s back a couple times. “Why don’t we head in and get something nice and cold to drink? Thank you for helping with my chores.”

“You’re welcome, and yeah, that’d be nice.”

* * *

The afternoon had rolled around, Lake decided to open up her file in Pokémon Sword. Nate made a profile for her so she was able to have her own playthrough.

Lake had started up the game the previous evening so she only had one badge. It was an easy victory for her recently evolved Raboot and Corvisquire.

Apparently the next gym leader was Nessa who used water types and Atticus the Yamper should be good against her.

Lake couldn’t help wondering how a certain king would feel about the nickname.

She constantly found herself losing track of time in the Wild Area looking for Pokémon and accidentally bumping into ones that were way too powerful to fight.

After finally getting back on track Lake took on Nessa at her gym and gained the ability to capture stronger Pokémon.

And Atticus decided to evolve.

“What?” Lake didn’t intend to mirror the text on the screen. “What’s he gonna turn into?”

The evolution finished and the happy jingle played.

“Aw man. Now he’s not a corgi.”

Lake found herself mildly regretting the evolution. Not that Bolthund was bad in any way, it just wasn’t a cute corgi.

But whatever, Lake was able to catch stronger Pokémon so she went exploring in the Wild Area some more. As she was taking a sip of lemonade a Zigazagoon bumped into her. Their erratic movements made them hard to dodge.

“Wait wha-“ Lake nearly choked on her drink when she saw the bright colours. “Those colours! They’re amazing! The blue and pink with the white.”

She found her hands shaking, this was her first shiny Pokémon ever. Thankfully this Zigzagoon was at a relatively high level and shouldn’t go down in one hit.

Lake had kept a paralyzing move on Atticus, Nate was more than happy to explain the catching mechanics before Lake started her file.

“Oh god,” Lake’s heart had started pounding, she never expected to get so worked up over a video game, but here we are. She lowered the Pokémon’s HP down to red and selected her PokéBalls. She started with Great Balls to have a better chance.

In the moment she kinda forgot that Zigzagoon was one of the easiest things to catch to in the game so of course the first toss was successful.

Not that it was any less suspenseful.

“I can’t think of a name right now, I’m too shocked.”

There was another matter too, Lake already had a Linoone in her party, after much debate she decided to just keep both Pokémon for the time being. Yeah team balance is important, blah blah blah, but it’s a cool Pokémon!

She lost herself in more exploring around the Wild Area and doing raid battles catching anything new she encountered. It was a nice way of killing time without having to think much about things.

Then it happened, Lake found herself tearing up.

“Fuck, again,” Lake rubbed her eyes.

“I heard some excitement and thought I should come in and see what you’re doing,” of course Whittney had the worst timing. “Oh Lake, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know and it’s annoying. This has been going on for a couple days now and I hate it. There’s obviously something wrong with me and I can’t figure out what. I’m living in a nice home with a nice family who cares about me, and I care about them. I’m away from the train, away from the flecs, and I’m safe. So why am I crying?”

Whittney sat down next to Lake and gave her a hug. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“I dunno Whittney, the only thing I’m feeling is irritated and yet here I am in tears,” Lake failed to not snap at Whittney, she instantly felt bad. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be, it’s confusing,” Whittney only tightened her hug. “Lake, this is normal. You’re recovering from trauma and often times when somebody is, their body finally starts to process everything they’ve been through after reaching a time when they’re out of danger.”

“So I’m just going to keep spontaneously crying? Great.”

“Not forever, just for a time. I can’t tell you how long this will last unfortunately. But please be easier on yourself about it.

“Ugh.”

“That doesn’t sound like you being easy on yourself.”

“No, that ‘ugh,’ was because I’m not looking forward to this being a thing for who knows how long.”

Whittney smiled softly and gave Lake a kiss on the head. “You’re going to be okay. And if you want to talk to me about anything I’m here for you.”

Lake sighed. “Thank you. If I can think of anything to talk to you about, I will.”

“Would you like me to stay with you?”

“I… I think I would.”

“Let me get a few things first then we’ll have a nice quiet afternoon together.”

Whittney gathered everything she needed to crochet and then sat down on the couch with Lake. “But before I get started, I would still like to see what was so exciting.”

“Oh yeah! So I uh… wait who am I kidding? Nate’s explained this to you,” Lake excitedly opened up her Pokémon menu and selected her shiny new Zigzagoon. “These little guys are usually black and white.”

“Oh you found a shiny, that _is_ exciting.”

“Yeah, he looks really cool. I already have a Linoone, Zigzagoon’s evolution, but I think I’ll keep both for now. There’s no reason not to.”

“If you like them then keep them.”

“It’s fun being able to swap my party whenever I want. I remember in older games you had to go to a Pokémon Center to do it.”

Whittney sat on the couch next to Lake occasionally asking about her game, then eventually it was time to leave to pick Nate and Jesse up from school.

“I’ll be back soon,” she said before leaving the house. “Bye Lake.”

“See you later,” Lake waved while hanging off the back of the couch; she was careful with how she balanced herself.

After Whittney closed the door Lake sat back down and continued to explore. But it didn’t take long for the house phone on the side table to ring.

Lake wasn’t sure whether or not she should pick it up, but she recognized the number.

“Hello?”

_“Oh! Hi Lake!”_

It was Jesse!

“Hey, what’s up? Why are you phoning?”

_“Well… uh… Can you tell my mom that I’ll be coming home late?”_

“Huh? You get in trouble?”

_“No, this weird thing kept happening to me today. I just kept tearing up out of nowhere. One of my teachers saw and she told me I should see the guidance counselor about it.”_

“You too?”

_“Oh! So it’s not just me. Good. Well! Not good because I’m sorry that’s happening to you too. But it’s good because well-“_

“-You’re not alone.”

_“Exactly.”_

“Whittney just left. Like, literally just left. You should shoot her a text.”

_“Drat. Okay, thanks Lake loveyoubye.”_

Lake found herself too stunned to say anything before Jesse hung up, he sounded in a rush at the end.

“Love you… too.”

Huh.

She tried her best to not dwell on that too much. At some point without realizing it Lake _had_ become a Cosay in spirit. And families tell each other they love them.

And it didn’t feel wrong for Jesse to have said that.

This time Lake knew why she was crying.

* * *

The second Nate got home he leapt onto the couch next to Lake.

“Have you played more Pokémon today?” he asked.

“Yeah, I got a couple more badges and saw something weird. I bumped into a Zigzagoon but it wasn’t black and white like it’s supposed to be. I thought the game was glitched so I turned it off immediately.”

Nate looked like his heart had shattered into a million pieces. “Lake! That was a shiny Pokémon. Those are really special and you just found one random- wait...” his rant stopped when he saw Lake’s smug expression. “You troll! You caught it! Didn’t you!”

“Of course I did, you know I know what a shiny is,” Lake softly laughed as Nate playfully smacked her on the arm. “Wanna see?”

“Yes!”

Lake grabbed the controller and turned the game on, she showed Nate as soon as she could. “I don’t know why, but those colours kind of speak to me.”

“It’s soooo cool. What are you going to name him?”

“I dunno. Hopefully I can think of something decent.”

“I’m sure you will, you’re good at coming up with names.”

“Aw, thanks Nate,” Lake ruffled his hair.

Then again, Nate’s standards were probably pretty low thanks to Jesse.

Whittney walked into the living room, she looked like she was prepared to leave again at a moment’s notice.

“You know, Jesse can get back by himself,” Lake couldn’t help staring at her. “Didn’t he used to?”

“He did…” Whittney bit her thumb. “But, I just worry now.”

“Don’t worry, Jesse’s not stupid enough to get on the train again,” Lake tried to reassure Whittney, she wasn’t sure if she succeeded or not. “And I’d be impressed if he managed to end up with a _third issue_ for it to fix.”

“Impressed?”

“Yeah he already has a record, nobody’s been on the train twice before him. Frickin’ idiot.”

“You’re not really helping…”

“Okay okay, look. The second time was because Jesse wanted to keep his promise to me, and because for all he knew I probably would have died if I didn’t get off the darn thing. I’m out here now, Jesse’s here, his family’s here. He won’t get picked up again. Have faith.”

Whittney sighed. “You’re right. I should trust him to get back. However…”

She still didn’t sit down or relax. Whittney’s phone buzzed, it was a couple texts from Jesse.

_|so cool thing therapists know about the train|_

_|or at least they know ppl talk about 1|_

_|omw ttyl|_

_|love you|_

“No, Jesse,” Whittney nearly texted that she’ll drive to his school to pick him up. But she finally sat down instead. She still didn’t relax, but she decided to have faith in Jesse. She texted to him, “See you soon.” And left it at that.

“Hey I’m proud of you,” Lake said. “And if Jesse somehow does end up getting on that train again, I’ll hop on too and give him shit for worrying you. Then I’ll drag him home.”

There was a flaw with Lake’s plan, if you could even call it that. “But then I’d have you worrying me too.”

“Well then, you can chew out both me and Jesse for it,” Lake couldn’t help smiling.

Wittney knew Lake was trying her best to make her feel better, her features softened. “Thank you.”

Lake blushed. “Nah, I didn’t do much of anything. I just said I’d yell at your son.”

“You said that from a place of caring.”

“I guess, yeah.”

Lake still didn’t understand how she ended up in such a nice home.

She passed the Switch controller over to Nate so he could do his daily Animal Crossing chores then Lake went upstairs to her room to grab her book and reading glasses. Wearing them ended up not being the worst thing ever. They were frameless which in Lake’s opinion looks kinda cool. And Jesse had taught Lake a technique to make reading easier when your eyes tend to wander. Hold a bookmark or ruler under the sentence you’re currently reading.

It was actually a huge help for Lake.

The music in Animal Crossing was nice to listen to while reading, the genres were vastly different between the sci-fi novel and the game, but still. It was relaxing.

Some time passed and the front door opened. Jesse came into the living room where Animal Crossing had been replaced by Family Feud.

There was an awkward air hanging between him and Lake.

“Hey guys,” Jesse gave everybody a general greeting with a wave.

Lake jabbed her thumb at Jesse. “I told you he could find his way home.”

“Huh?”

“That you did,” Whittney said with a smile, she directed her attention back to Jesse. “How did it go with the counselor?”

“Pretty good,” Jesse replied as he sat down next to Nate, he gave his brother a hug. “Like I said therapists know that people when they go missing for a while sometimes come back talking about a mysterious train. They kind of think it’s just people coping but I insisted that it’s real and managed to convince her.”

“Did you show her a picture of me?” Lake asked, not looking up from her book.

“Uh, well, not at first but… I was talking about you a lot and I thought I should show off a picture of my new friend. Especially because it’s… _not exactly a secret_ that I have a bad track record with friends.” 

Lake snorted. “And you thought showing a picture of _me_ would prove otherwise?”

“Hey now, give yourself some credit, besides, at this point you’re looking more grunge than punk.”

“Hmm… that’s true, yeah.”

“Especially now that your hair’s starting to grow back,” Jesse chuckled as he rubbed Lake’s head.

“Stop it,” Lake smacked his hand away. “You’re like, the opposite of most people. Usually it’s a buzz cut people can’t stop feeling.”

“Yeah but you already had one when we met. Plus, your hair really did look like needles. And needles aren’t soft and fluffy.”

“I know I know, and my hair is now,” Lake pouted. “You’re so obsessed with it.”

“Well, it’s also kinda weird seeing you with hair, and I’m sorry for saying this,” he actually wasn’t. “But you’re really cute.”

“I’m not cute,” Lake hunched her shoulders as she quietly protested Jesse’s claim.

Whittney barely held back a laugh, “Acting like that is just proving Jesse right.”

Lake made a noise which told the other people in the room that it was about time to back off.

* * *

After Stephan came home everybody ate dinner and Lake decided to upstairs to her room to pick up her writing exercises. Relearning how to write has been a long annoying process.

Jesse decided to follow Lake because he still felt like something important needed to be said. He knocked on her open door as a courtesy.

“Yeah, come in,” Lake didn’t fully understand that behaviour but she appreciated it.

“So, uh, can we talk a bit?”

“Of course,” Lake put her homework down figuring things might take a while, and holding it would be pointless.

“So um Lake,” Jesse still couldn’t meet her eyes. “About what I said on the phone earlier. I know some people get weird about friends-”

Lake knew where this was going, she gave Jesse a flick to the forehead. “That’s for hanging up before I could say it back.”

“Oh! So... you didn’t think it was weird?” Jesse was finally able to look Lake in the eyes.

“I don’t...” Lake sighed heavily. “I don’t really know how exactly to classify our relationship right now. We’re best friends, we know this. But are we also something else? I’m not sure. All I know is that it didn’t feel wrong when you said that.”

“It didn’t feel wrong when I said it. I always say ‘I love you’ when I get off the phone with family.”

“Family...” Lake liked the sound of that. “I’ve never had one before.”

“I know. And it’s _super sad_.”

“It’s also normal for a reflection. You know, I’m pretty rough around the edges, and frankly, abrasive. But I have a soft spot for you and your family. I don’t have a problem with loving you.”

“What an honour,” Jesse smirked.

“Oh shut up,” Lake pushed him with a giggle. “You know what I mean.”

“I do. I love you Lake.”

Lake blushed. “And I love you Jesse. Even if you are turning into an annoying older brother.”

“Wow,” Jesse replayed that last sentence in his mind a few times. “I guess I am kind of your big brother now.”

“No.” Lake saw Jesse’s growing grin. “For the love of god, don’t call me your little sister.”

“Oh but you can call me your big brother?”

“Did it bother you?”

“Nope.”

“Then that’s why. If you want to start thinking of me as your sibling then please use that word. ‘Sister’ just doesn’t feel right.”

“Okay, so I have a little bro, and a little sib now.”

Lake smiled. “I honestly don’t mind being called your little sib.”

Jesse pulled Lake into a side-hug. “Are we going to tell Nate the good news?”

“I’m pretty sure he already considers me his older sister, he recently dropped the ‘my’ when he’s talking about his mom to me.”

“Well… are we going to tell him you don’t like being called a sister?”

“He’s too cute, I can’t do that to him. I figured I’d just roll with whatever he goes with.”

“He’s not going to be your adorable little brother forever, he’s probably going to end up looking like me some day.” Jesse pulled the goofiest face he could think of.

“Cripes, you’re right. He already kinda looks like you; yeah I should correct him.”

“You have a big soft spot for him, don’t you?”

“I do,” Lake sighed fondly. “I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about a little brother at first but the way he looks at me… And I don’t know _why_ but I think he admires me.”

“Mmmkay,” Jesse pantomimed writing notes. “Lake likes kids when they look up to her. And that’s about it for them.”

“Now hold on a minute,” Lake swatted away Jesse’s ‘pencil.’ “I haven’t met enough kids that aren’t in the Apex for us to use that as data. For all we know I love kids when they aren’t little terrors.”

“So we’ll just call you only liking kids that look up to you a hypothesis or something.”

“Ugh,” Lake didn’t like how that made her sound like Tulip.

“So anyway, how’s your writing going?”

“It’s going pretty well, I think,” Lake got her work off of her desk and showed Jesse. “I’m mostly writing like a prime now.”

Jesse looked over the paper, Lake’s writing was pretty much the same in style, she was still dotting her ‘i’s in that cute way. But Lake’s capitalization was fixed. “Hey look at you go. Only a handful of things are backwards. You’re a fast learner.”

“Thank you,” pride swelled up in Lake’s chest. “Hopefully by this time next week nothing will be mirrored. Have you ever tried writing backwards? It’s freaking weird. And what’s weirder is that I have an easier time writing like a prime when I do it left-handed.”

“Left-handed?”

“Yeah, Tulip’s a lefty so I always wrote with my right hand while reflecting her. I held my pencil in that hand out of habit and I have a hell of a time writing like that. Maybe it’s just because that’s how it was always done when I was in the mirror world?”

“Make sense to me. So uh, wanna go back to our family? We can talk about this on the way.”

‘Our family’ felt strange but nice to Lake, she made her reply as she walked towards the door. “Sure, we could get back. I don’t wanna miss the end of the show.”

“You’re really getting into game shows, aren’t you?” Jesse followed Lake through the hallway and down the stairs.

“They’re fun. And call me a softie but I like seeing people who are down on their luck get something nice. Even if those shows are just a huge spectacle.”

“It just feels good,” Jesse nodded. “I always feel so bad for them when they lose.”

“I might have to make a habit out of watching them every morning.” Lake left out the part where she also wanted more of an excuse to see Jesse and Nate off before school. “So how’s your homework load?”

Jesse cupped his face in his hands. “AWFUL. My teachers showed me no mercy. And Lake, I kinda suck at math and science. I might have to have some friends over to help me this weekend. …Would that be okay with you?”

“Sure,” Lake took a bit to answer that. “They’re nerd-friends and I should be adjusted to dealing with those.”

“And you have your own room now so you don’t even have to be around them if you don’t want to,” Jesse put his hand on Lake’s shoulder. “It would actually mean a lot if you did try. You don’t have to of course. But I think it’d be nice.”

“I’ll try… but no promises alright?”

“I wouldn’t ask you to go that far. I know you, and people aren’t your favourite.”

“And you know, I might be able to help out too. Tulip’s favourite subjects are math and science. It’s English she sucked at.”

Jesse’s eyes practically sparkled as he looked at Lake. “Really?”

“Yeah, and apparently I remember a lot of those things, go figure. Whittney says that I already know some pretty advanced stuff. Tulip’s an overachiever in those areas I guess.”

“And when you’re in school I’ll try my hardest to help you out. I already did grade 9 so I should be some help.”

“It still doesn’t feel real,” Lake stopped walking just outside of the living room and leaned onto Jesse. “The idea of me going to school.”

“Feels real to me,” Jesse said with a shrug. “I always imagined us eventually going to school together. And just hanging out in general off of the train. Making new friends, making new mutual ones, the thing about freshman is that I haven’t met them yet.”

“You are going to be pickier from now on, right?”

“Right. I actually,” Jesse rubbed the back of his head, “broke things off with some of my terrible old friends already. Not all of them, some were skipping. But most of them.”

Lake turned around and tightly hugged Jesse. “I’m proud of you. I know that wasn’t easy for you.”

“It wasn’t; I had some good memories of them, and some of these guys I knew since I was little. But I had to. They were bad and some of them hurt me.”

“Hurt you?” Lake looked Jesse in the eyes, she was mad, but not at him.

“Yeah… I don’t really want to talk about it now. If that’s okay.”

“Yeah it’s okay. I’ll be here for you when you do want to talk.”

“Thanks Lake,” Jesse returned her hug. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Right after that exchange Jesse and Lake joined their family in the living room to watch gameshows. And in Lake’s case, also work on writing. Eventually the kids moved on to watching She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. Nate was thrilled to get Lake into the show.

Although the next day being a school day meant that they couldn’t stay up too late.

They… accidentally did.

* * *

Over the next few days everybody fell into a comfortable routine. The kids would wake up early, even Lake, she would sit on the couch and watch early morning gameshows with Jesse and Nate before Whittney drove them to school. After Whittney got back Lake would help out with her chores, then Lake would play some video games, usually Pokémon Sword, and then after getting tired of that Lake would read. And usually cry at some point when her mind wasn’t busy. Then Nate and Jesse came home from school together and the family would spend the rest of the day together watching TV and doing various activities.

One night something differed, Lake’s bedroom door was open after she went upstairs. She tended to keep it closed because she liked her alone-time. And her family understood that and gave her space and privacy.

“Hey Jesse, can we have a little talk?” Lake called out to him as he passed by, she sat up and patted the bed next to her.

“Sure,” Jesse walked over and sat down next to Lake. “What’s up?”

“Well, lately I’ve been doing some self-reflecting-”

“-Self reflecting, huh?” Jesse smirked.

“Yes, self-reflecting, and stop wiggling your eyebrows you weirdo,” Lake pushed Jesse’s face so he wasn’t looking at her. “Look, if you don’t quit it, then I’m not talking to you. This is serious.”

Jesse cleared his throat. “Right, got it, serious. Go on.”

Lake sighed and flopped onto Jesse’s lap. “I’m starting to think I might not exactly be a girl. But... I dunno.”

“Oh,” Jesse’s eyebrows rose in comprehension. “This is serious.”

“At first I thought my discomfort with being called a girl was simply because Mace would always taunt me by calling me ‘little girl’ and ‘little sliver girl’ and ‘girlie’ and so on. So I figured I was just associating ‘being a girl’ with Mace putting me down. But now that I’m out here I can relax and think about things. And... I can say that I’m not a fan of people referring to me as a girl. I don’t _hate_ it when people use she or her to refer to me but I think I’d prefer if they didn’t. But I also don’t think I’m a boy either.”

“Well,” Jesse put his hand on Lake’s who had hers resting on her tummy. “I’m not an expert in this. But, it’s possible you might be nonbinary.”

“Hmm...” Lake tried out the concept in her mind a few times and ended up smiling. “I think you’re onto something.”

“Would you like me to try out some new pronouns for you?”

“I would.” 

Jesse cleared his throat in a somewhat comical fashion. “Hey Charlie, I’m home now and while I was away I made a new friend. Their name is Lake, and they saved my butt about a billion times. They’re new to town and they’ve been staying with my family.”

While Jesse was talking Lake’s smile grew more and more.

“That actually felt really nice,” they said. “I think I will use they and them from now on.”

“Do you want that to be with just us, or just my family, or publicly?” Jesse asked, with a soft yet serious expression.

“Hm? Publicly,” Lake replied. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m friends with a lot of people, a lot are LGBTQ+ and some of them are trans and nonbinary. Unfortunately, a few of them aren’t out to many people for a variety of reasons. I just wanted to make sure so I don’t overstep any bounds.”

“I guess you being a social butterfly has its perks.”

“Yeah,” Jesse said cheerfully. “I know all sorts of people so I learned a thing or two.”

“Thanks, I really appreciate it,” Lake said earnestly. “If it wasn’t for you I’d probably still be spinning my wheels.”

“Any time.”

“Do… you think I could ask your friends a couple questions?”

“Well, it’s not really my place to offer for them. But I could talk to them about it and see, but they’re not obligated to, y’know.”

“I know.”

“I’m sure they’d be okay with it though. So try not to look so down.”

Lake smiled slightly. “Okay. Tulip never really looked into this stuff so it’s pretty new to me. I just know she’s positive about her crush on her childhood friend because she logic’d it. She heard how people talk about love, and crushes, and whatever, and realized she had those symptoms while looking at her friend.”

“Those symptoms,” Jesse said with a giggle.

“What? That’s the wording she used. How else would you put it?”

Jesse softly put his hand to his chest. “Tulip figured out she was in love because she felt the things people always talk about.”

“You really zero in on the feelings thing, don’t you?”

“I’m a very heartful person.”

“It’s a good thing. Just. Weird for me. Tulip’s almost the opposite, and I ended up somewhere in between. I’m honestly very emotional, but I also like to approach things somewhat logically.” Lake frowned. “But the day I start making a logic tree for fun then you’d better snap me out of it. I don’t care _how_ , just do it.”

“What’s wrong with logic trees?”

“What’s wrong with- ugh- Jesse! They’re so _nerdy._ ”

“Nothing wrong with that. C’mon Lake, embrace your inner nerd, give them some love.”

“I’m okay with being a bit nerdy,” Lake put their fingers close together, “but logic trees for fun are going too far.”

“Okay,” Jesse said with a chuckle. “I’ll stop you if I ever catch you making those.”

“Thank you.”

“So… about what we, well, _you_ figured out earlier. Are we going to tell our family now? Or wait?”

“Hm,” Lake paused in thought. “We should probably wait until tomorrow. As right as this feels, I think I should probably sleep on it just to be sure.”

“You sleep on things a lot.”

“Atticus is a wise king who happens to be a dog.”

“A dog-king, how could anybody possibly deny his wisdom?”

“You know, I wonder how Atticus got home after Tulip left. Alan Dracula is Alan Dracula so he’d have no problems. But Atticus has no powers, just the gift of speech.”

Jesse got oddly quiet.

“What’s wrong?” Lake asked.

“I can’t help wondering how Alan’s doing right now. I kinda miss him.”

“I miss him too. But the train was his home. I know he’s fine and who knows, maybe he made some new friends.”

“I hope he did,” Jesse said with a smile. “I wonder what they’d name him.”

“I think he ended up liking the name Alan Dracula, so for all we know he could have turned into a sign or something with his name on it. And then they’d try to figure out how he ended up with such a weird name.”

“Admit it, it grew on you too.”

“It did.”

Jesse glanced over at Lake’s clock, and saw the time. “I should probably get ready for bed now.”

“Aw already?” Lake pouted, they were enjoying lying like that with Jesse.

“Yeah, it’s a school night, but at least tomorrow’s Thursday. On Friday night we can stay up late and finish watching She-Ra.”

“That’s show’s so much better than I expected,” Lake knew they should get up so Jesse could leave but nah, lap is comfy.

“It’s really good! And I saw some spoilers onli-“

Jesse was cut off by Lake scowling at him. “Nope, don’t even start down that train of thought. The last time you did, you let something slip.”

“Got it, I’ll just say it’s really cool, and leave it at that,” Jesse softly looked at Lake. “You know, you have to get up at some point so I can sleep. Or do you want me to stay in here tonight?”

“No,” Lake sat up. “I’ve finally adjusted to not having you with me. We probably shouldn’t fall into that old habit again. How have you been doing? At night I mean.”

“The first couple nights were kinda hard, I have to admit. But I got used to things too.”

“Hey…” Lake leaned onto Jesse. “I remember waking up one morning with one of your coats. I’ve been meaning to ask about that.”

“Nate told me he could hear you crying in your sleep,” Jesse had debated not mentioning that part. “And he woke me up thinking I could help. So I brought a jacket in thinking that maybe you might’ve been missing me. Did it work?”

“It must’ve if Nate didn’t get you again. I don’t remember doing that, or even what I might’ve been dreaming about.”

“At least it hasn’t happened again.”

“I feel bad for the kid, he shares a wall with me and looks tired some mornings.”

Jesse snorted in laughter. “Yeah he’s told me you’ve kept him up a couple nights with your snoring. And in his defense, you kept me up too at first. I got used to it though.”

“Yeesh, that bad huh?”

“Nah, you sound like a little bear.”

“Still a bear though.”

“Meh, he’ll get used to it.”

“Or I could rearrange my room. It’d be a pain in the ass but it’s not like it’s not possible.”

“We can think about it. I’d have no problems helping you if you do choose to move things around in here. It’s your room.”

“That’s true.”

“Well, I really should actually get going,” Jesse said then he held out his arms for a hug. “Good night.”

“Night Jesse,” Lake gave him his hug. “And thanks again for helping me figure myself out.”

“D’aw, I just gave you the word, you did all the thinking.”

“You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

Jesse couldn’t help thinking that Lake was being really sappy, but he decided to not verbalize it for once.

After one last squeeze Jesse left the room and got ready for bed.

Lake flopped on their bed and looked at the ceiling. They decided to jot something down in their journal they had started keeping.

They knew that writing their old way in a journal was probably slowing their process with relearning how to write but Lake also liked the idea of maybe making things harder for a person other than them to read. Lake wrote down their thoughts about their identity, and personhood, and made notes to look into things a little bit more at a later date.

But for the time being, Lake felt comfortable with the nonbinary label and that was enough for them.

Lake’s mind was still highly active so they grabbed their reading glasses and novel off the table.

* * *

Lake woke up with their glasses skewed and their book on their stomach. They cringed knowing that falling asleep with glasses on wasn’t a good idea. But they were still getting used to having to take them off before bed.

“Ugh,” Lake rolled over and _gently_ tossed their glasses onto the table and squinted at the clock. It read 8AM, Lake didn’t even set an alarm but their internal clock was doing a fantastic job at being consistent.

They curled up slightly at the thought of coming out to everybody. Lake knew that their family was kind and accepting, and it wouldn’t be a problem to ask them to use different pronouns. But there was always a risk.

But risk was Lake’s normal for the longest time.

So they stretched out their back and went downstairs.

“Good morning Lake,” Whittney greeted them as she always did.

“Morning,” Lake returned her greeting and then said their good mornings to Jesse and Nate. Then Lake took a breath, they were hoping to also have Stephan in the room but he was already at work. “So, Jesse already knows this. I’ve been doing some thinking lately and… I have concluded that I’m nonbinary. And I would prefer it if you used they and them to refer to me from now on.”

“I’m glad you’re figuring yourself out,” Whittney simply smiled, she didn’t express any surprise at all. “Would it be okay if I still call you dear and hun?”

“Huh,” Lake didn’t expect that question. “Yeah. Go for it. It doesn’t bother me when you do it.”

“And if it ever starts bothering you tell me, okay?”

“Sure?” That went a lot smoother than Lake expected. But then again, everything with Whittney did.

“I guess that explains why you wanted me to call you my older sibling,” Nate said, he was completely unfazed.

“I guess it does,” that didn’t actually occur to Lake. “So, you’re cool with it?”

“Of course,” Nate looked up at Lake. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, I, I don’t know why you wouldn’t be,” Lake didn’t expect _that_ question either. “I just know that sometimes people aren’t.”

“Well those people are stupid,” Nate went back to playing his game.

Lake’s legs felt like rubber, they didn’t expect their coming out to be such a non-event. Media prepared them for otherwise.

“What would you like for breakfast?” Whittney asked.

“I think I’ll just pour myself a bowl of cereal in a bit,” Lake replied as they plopped down on the couch next to Jesse.

“Okay,” Whittney went back to watching TV with her kids.

Halfway through the show it was time for everybody to leave, they all said their goodbyes and left Lake all by themself. They finished watching Let’s Make a Deal and then got themself a bowl of cereal like they said they would.

Over the past few days Lake had started to see patterns in the prices on The Price is Right. Especially when it came to the cars, Lake often found themself frustrated when people didn’t pick up on the last number always being a six or eight. It’s never zero or five! C’mon guys!

It was still a fun watch though.

After Whittney came home Lake helped out with her chores like they normally would. It was relaxing spending some time outside in the fresh air. Even if that annoying jogger who always passed by was condescending to Lake. 

After the chores were wrapped up and Lake was done with TV they played Pokémon as they normally did.

Eventually the afternoon rolled by, and Lake found themself not wanting to play games or read, or anything. They felt restless.

Lake walked up to Whittney’s sewing room. “I’m going for a walk,” they told her.

“A walk?” Whittney stopped sewing and turned her chair around. “Sure, just bring your phone with you okay? If you get lost call me and I’ll pick you up.”

“I won’t get lost, I can count.”

“I know you can count but you’ve never gone anywhere by yourself before. Actually, would you like me to come with you?”

“No thanks,” Lake couldn’t help feeling smothered. “I kinda wanna be alone for a bit. But I also don’t feel like sitting in my room, y’know? I’ve been too sedentary lately, it’s starting to drive me nuts.”

“Okay, but please, make sure you bring your phone.”

“I will, I’ll even show you it’s in my jacket pocket before I leave.”

That arrangement worked for Whittney, although she was still reluctant to let Lake leave all by themself.

* * *

Lake breathed in the fresh air when they stepped out the door. They had no idea where they wanted to go, just that they did. Their legs were itching for some movement.

So Lake started to walk, and walk, without a single thought. They looked at some random birds in trees, and dogs that went by with their owners. Lake had to try not to go up to the cute dogs and ask to pet them. They figured that the owners wouldn’t want to be bothered. Lake also saw a couple stray cats and tried calling them over but with no success which was disappointing.

The unfortunate thing about not thinking much was that Lake found themself occasionally tearing up. Which was fine at home, but embarrassing in public. Especially in such a cool jacket.

Lake got very turned around, not that they would admit it. But Lake figured that if they could count they can find their way back by following the street and house numbers.

“Hm,” a large building caught Lake’s attention then they noticed the sign next to it. Lake ended up at an elementary school. They sent Whittney a text asking which school Nate went to.

_|How’d you get there?|_

|I dunno, is it far?|

_|Kind of.|_

|So I guess I’ll wait here for school to let out. It’s almost time.|

_|Okay. Thanks for texting me|_

|np|

Lake shrugged and leaned on a nearby tree, after first making sure it wasn’t oozing. They’ve reflected Tulip in the past with sap in her hair. It was an awful experience, fortunately Lake’s hair was far shorter than Tulip’s ever was.

Sap on the hands?

Fun!

Sap in the hair?

Hell no! It sucks!

Lake stared at the school, looking into the windows to see the students hard at work. Their heart ached, they found that they really wished they had that experience for real. They’ll be starting high school soon enough, but seeing these kids was a reminder that Lake never really had a childhood.

“Son of a-“ Lake wiped tears out of their eye. “Ugh. I’m so sick of this.”

They lost track of time while quietly watching the school.

“Lake!” Nate’s voice snapped them out of it. He ran up and gave them a big hug. “I didn’t expect you to pick me up!”

“Heeey bud,” Lake hugged him back then ruffled his hair with a smile. “I just ended up here while on a walk.”

“Do you know how to get back?”

“Mmmm… no. I really don’t off the top of my head.”

“That’s okay, me and Jesse know how.”

“I think Whittney’s picking us up anyway.”

“Oh yeah,” Nate took Lake by the hand. “C’mon, let’s sit down.”

He led them to the steps of the school and sat down, then Nate opened up his backpack and dug around in there.

“Do you do this every school day?” Lake asked as they watched kids filter out of the school, some with their parents, and some without.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Nate replied, he pulled a packet of crackers and cheese spread out of his backpack. “I sit here while waiting for Jesse to come pick me up.”

“So I take it his school is nearby.”

“It’s about a couple blocks away so I never have to wait long.”

Nate opened up his snack and put some “cheese” onto a cracker then handed it to Lake. Then he prepared his own cracker.

“So I guess I’ll eventually start picking you up from school too,” Lake bit into their cheesy cracker, not really knowing what to make of it.

“You’re totally right!” Nate fidgeted in excitement. “You’re going to the same school as Jesse!”

“I will be pretty soon at least,” Lake finished off their cracker. “So is this what you eat for a snack every day?”

“Sometimes I don’t even eat the crackers and just have the cheese.”

“Valid.”

“You want another? Mom gives me two packs.”

“Sure, I could go for another.”

Nate and Lake ate crackers and cheese spread as they talked about their days. Nate said his day was pretty boring but he still had some funny stories to share about his friends. Lake talked about what all they accomplished in Pokémon.

Eventually Nate realized he should have done something sooner, he took a quick selfie with Lake as they were eating and sent Jesse a text.

Two more kids came out of the school.

“Hey guys,” Nate greeted his friends, they always left kind of late.

“Hey,” Nate’s first friend said, he noticed Lake and started to stare at his reflection in their face. “Wow, cool.”

“You shouldn’t stare,” Nate’s second friend said, although she probably shouldn’t talk as she was also staring at her reflection.

Lake sighed knowing that this was going to be a regular occurrence.

“Who is this?” the boy asked.

“They’re my new sibling I told you about, Lake,” Nate replied. “And Lake, these are my friends, Keith and Megan.”

“Hey, nice to meet you,” Lake gave the two a wave, figuring they should play nice.

“Nice to meet you!” the kids echoed back at Lake.

Lake had absolutely no idea how to talk to kids who aren’t Nate so they quietly ate as the three friends quickly talked amongst themselves while Keith and Megan waited for their ride to arrive.

“So Lake, how come you’re all shiny?” Keith eventually blurted out, and Megan looked appalled.

“I’m metal,” Lake replied, the last thing they wanted to do was go into the whole mess involving being a reflection.

“That’s so cool,” Megan’s eyes were practically shining. “Nate said you were metal but I thought he meant the music or something. Not actual _metal_ metal.”

“Well… I mean I do listen to the music sometimes,” Lake said and forced a chuckle.

“How come you’re metal?” Keith, age eight, was bad at reading the room, and his curiosity often got the best of him.

“I just am,” Lake did their very best to not snap at the kid.

“Aw Keith, don’t quiz Lake like that,” Nate stepped in. “All you need to know is that they’re super cool, and helped Jesse get home.”

“Okay,” Keith slumped.

Lake almost felt bad for him.

_Almost_.

About a minute later a car drove up and it was time for Nate’s friends to go to their homes. They were neighbours so they just rode in the same car. Everybody waved and Lake breathed a sigh of relief the second those two left.

“You’re not good with kids, are you?” Now Nate, he was observant.

“You’re the only one I’ve had any real contact with. So no. I’m not good with kids.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I think I’d be willing to learn for when you have your friends over.”

“You will?” Nate looked at Lake in that cute way that they absolutely could not resist.

“Yeah, I will.”

Lake pulled Nate into a side-hug and the two of them waited for Jesse to show up while finishing off Nate’s snacks.

It didn’t take too much longer for Jesse to stroll up to the school with a warm smile on his face.

“I see you wandered all the way over here,” he said.

“Yeah, I needed some fresh air and to stretch my legs,” Lake said as they stood up. “I’ve been sitting too much lately for my tastes.”

“We were always moving on the train,” Jesse said.

“The longest I ever spent in one place was three days.”

“Wow that’s forever for you.”

“Exactly.”

“You probably worried mom when you disappeared for so long.”

“I told her I was going out, and I even showed her that I had my phone.”

“Alright.”

“So don’t worry so much, I’m starting to get used to this family thing,” Lake gently knocked their knuckles on Jesse’s shoulder with a smile.

“Yeah, Lake’s really getting the hang of the big sib thing,” Nate cheerfully said.

“Aw Nate,” Lake’s heart filled with warmth when he referred to them as ‘big sib.’

“It was fun waiting for Jesse with you.”

“Yeah I liked it too.”

“Did you eat all of Nate’s snack?” Jesse asked in a playfully accusatory way.

“I did not steal his snack if that’s what you’re asking,” Lake put their hand on their chest. “He offered some to me which was very generous of him. And I accepted his offer.”

Jesse chuckled. “Which was very polite of you.”

“Exactly.”

“So Nate, how was school?” Jesse asked him.

“It was a little boring but in science I learned…”

Nate talked about his school day up until Whittney arrived to pick up her kids, she looked pleased to see all three of them talking in front of the school. They were all safe, and happy.

And that was what’s most important.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man I'm going to give you guys trust issues if I keep changing the chapter count. I swear the next one is the last. This one originally was going to be but then I got a much better idea for a final chapter.
> 
> Now, you might be thinking "but Kujo! That's a lot of crying when Lake's not occupying their every waking thought." And you might be right! But also, yeah I kinda for a while was exactly like that and projected onto Lake a little. I'm better now! Mostly.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This time for real it's the final chapter.

As Lake spent the mid-afternoon on the couch playing video games they recalled their conversation with Jesse that same morning.

He had asked Lake if they would be okay with him inviting some friends over to help him with his homework. Of course they said it was fine.

Lake sighed when they looked over at the clock. It was almost time for Jesse to come home. They honestly weren’t looking forward to meeting new people just yet. But they also decided that they should try it out.

Who knows, maybe Jesse was going to bring over some cool friends.

When Lake heard the front door unlock they looked at it from the couch. Their heart started to beat faster, they wondered if maybe they _weren’t_ ready yet.

But even though their mind and body didn’t feel completely prepared Lake found their legs moving on their own and ended up near the door.

“Why am I here?” Lake thought, full of frustration. “People don’t stand at the door ready to greet somebody. That’s just weird.”

As Jesse opened the door Lake could hear him telling his friends about them. He was really hyping them up.

And then when he walked in Lake noticed one thing, and one thing only.

“Jesse! You eye!” Lake fought off the urge to touch it. “What happened?”

“Well, I got punched when I broke it off with a crummy friend,” Jesse replied with a shrug, as if it was no big deal.

Lake clenched their jaw and fists, it _was_ a big deal to them. They wanted to snap at him but knew that it wouldn’t help anything. Besides, Jesse’s friends were staring at Lake.

They mentally chided themself for making such a strange first impression.

“Hey,” Lake waved with an awkward smile. “I’m Lake.”

“Ah don’t worry about it,” Jesse’s first friend put his hand on Jesse’s shoulder. “I don’t blame you for worrying about this guy. I’m Charlie by the way.”

“I’m James,” Jesse’s other friend introduced himself. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Uh, yeah, good to meet you,” Lake said. “So… what are you guys helping Jesse with today?”

“Well, I’m helping him with chemistry mostly,” Charlie replied. “And a little math.”

“Yeah, math and physics,” James replied. “He’s pretty good in English and biology. And we’re not in any of the same electives as him.”

“I’m actually almost caught up with those,” Jesse said. “I’m just bad at anything involving a lot of numbers apparently.”

“Huh,” Lake made a mental note of that.

“Well, we’re going to get to work in the kitchen,” Jesse said as he hoisted up his heavy backpack. “There’s a lot I still need to do.”

As Jesse and his friends walked into the kitchen Lake patted Nate on the head and greeted him as he passed them on his way to the couch.

“So how was school?” Lake asked as they sat down and picked their controller back up.

“It was great!” Nate replied. “I made something really cool in art class! It’s at school drying right now. I can’t wait to show you! And also…”

Nate continued to tell Lake all the exciting stuff he did and learned, and added in some funny stories about his friends.

“Sounds like you had a good day,” Lake smiled. “Meanwhile my day was pretty normal. I just started playing a new game though.”

“Oh cool! It looks really fun,” Nate watched as Lake got into an encounter. “It plays like the old Paper Mario games, right?”

“Uuuhhh… apparently,” Lake replied with a shrug. “Tulip was a Sony kid, she had a DS but that was it for Nintendo.”

“Yeah, the Paper Marios everybody likes were before I was even born so I dunno.”

“Before I was first reflected.”

“Before Jesse was born.”

“Before Stephan was born.”

Nate giggled. “Those games aren’t _that_ old.”

“You guys don’t have a Wii, do you?”

Nate thought about it. “Maybe? But even if we did, the Virtual Console was taken down so we couldn’t get it on there.”

“Damn digital future,” Lake playfully shook their fist. They shrugged. “Oh well, Bug Fables is fun. The boss fights I’ve had were surprisingly difficult.”

Nate watched Lake some more as they went through their game, apparently they were busy doing sidequests. Although Lake’s mind seemed elsewhere, they kept glancing towards the kitchen.

“You can hang out with Jesse and his friends if you want,” Nate said. “Even bring the Switch with you. I can watch TV or grab my 3DS.”

“I just feel bad leaving you all alone.”

“Don’t feel bad, I like playing games by myself sometimes. You know, kinda how like you like being alone sometimes.”

“Okay, if you say so. But if you want my company just ask, alright?”

“Alright.”

Lake went through the mildly annoying process of turning off the controller and pulled the Switch out of the dock. But before they took it to the kitchen they swung by their room to grab their earbuds.

There was a free chair next to Jesse at the kitchen table and Lake happily took it.

“Hey Lake,” Jesse greeted them.

Lake scanned the table taking in all the paper and text books. Jesse was not kidding when he said he had a lot to do. Then they put in their earbuds and got back to playing their game.

“I can still hear you,” Lake figured they might as well say that. “The volume isn’t very loud.”

“That’s good because we wouldn’t want you to get...”

Jesse’s face gave away the punchline. “Jesse, don’t-”

“-tinnitus!” 

Lake groaned as Jesse busted a gut at his own terrible joke.

“You’re the worst. I’m going back to the living room, Nate doesn’t subject me to bad metal jokes.”

“You know I could teach him a few.”

“Please don’t.”

“So Lake, what are you playing?” James asked.

“Bug Fables,” Lake replied. “It’s really fun, I only finished the first chapter though so I can’t say anything other than that.”

“I don’t remember us having that game,” Jesse said.

“Earlier today Whittney told me that I can pick any game I want from the eShop and she’d buy it for me. And I picked this. Pokémon’s an RPG and I liked that, and I like bugs. So it made sense.”

“Wow, and you picked a cheap indie game,” James said. “You could’ve chosen a full-priced game.”

“Yeah well I didn’t want one,” Lake’s tone was harsh. “And I’m not about to take advantage of Whittney’s kindness like that.”

James actually seemed pleased by that answer. “Yeah.”

“So Jesse,” Lake said. “Just how much homework do you have?”

“Well, mostly just regular homework I’d get on a normal week times three, also a few essays… And I have a ton of studying on top of all that because the semester’s pretty much over.”

Lake listened as Jesse continued to go over all the homework he had left to do, and watched as he pulled out assignment after assignment. “Cripes, that is a lot and you only missed three weeks.”

“Wait, only?” Charlie responded. 

“Uh, yeah, I know somebody who missed several months of school, now I’m wondering what happened with her.”

“She probably repeated the grade. That’s like, an entire semester.”

“I know. But she’s a good student, so maybe she went to summer school or something. That’s a real thing, right?”

“It is a real thing, but she still missed several months.”

“Why did she miss so much school?” James asked. 

Lake looked over at Jesse while they thought. 

“Yeah go for it,” he knew exactly what Lake wanted to say. 

“The same reason as Jesse,” Lake replied. “She just disappeared for a while on the train.”

“How does the train decide how long to keep people for?” Charlie asked. 

“I don’t know exactly what the algorithm is, but it has to do with personal growth. Tulip didn’t cope well with some of the changes in her life and the train picked her up.”

“Oh, that little, huh?”

“No you don’t get it, Tulip coped _really poorly_ with things. There was some other stuff too of course, but it was mostly… that.”

“So why were you on the train? That’s where you met Jesse, right?”

Lake hesitated.

“You don’t have to tell him if you don’t want to,” Jesse gave Lake an out.

“Nah I probably should, I just finished airing out Tulip’s dirty laundry,” Lake took a deep breath. “You two aren’t stupid, you obviously know I’m metal. Well… I used to be Tulip’s reflection. She set me free while she was still on the train.”

“Reflections are people?” Charlie and James spoke simultaneously.

“Uh, yeah. We’re people,” Lake wasn’t shocked by their reaction. It was starting to feel like a pretty standard one for humans to have.

“I’ve done so many embarrassing things in front of the mirror,” Charlie looked and sounded mortified.

“Everybody has,” Lake said with a shrug. “Jesse told me about this ‘friend’ of his-“

“-Okay okay, they get it,” Jesse’s face was completely covered in a blush.

Lake chuckled, Jesse always did a poor job at convincing Lake that he wasn’t talking about himself.

“Can I ask you some questions about reflections?” James asked.

“I guess you could,” Lake replied, they were honestly getting annoyed with answering questions.

“So how do reflections know what to do in order to copy somebody?”

“Oh!” That was a very different question than the usual, however… “Yeah that one’s just instinct. I’m not sure how exactly I knew what Tulip would do as she did it. Which I guess is a good thing for those poor reflections of magicians practicing in the mirror.”

“I didn’t even think about that,” Jesse said, thankful for the distraction from a tough math problem.

“YouTube recommended me a video of a magician watching other people’s tricks, and some of them were recorded in a mirror, I couldn’t help feeling _a bit_ sorry for their reflection though,” Lake said, and then they looked at Jesse’s math homework. “Hey uh, James, Charlie, did either of you remind Jesse of the order of operations?”

“Whoops,” Charlie rubbed the back of his head. “I guess he didn’t have to use much math on the train. I kinda assumed he’d remember it.”

“I can’t even remember it when I’m in school,” Jesse flicked his eraser with a pout.

“Huh…” Lake gazed at Jesse. “You know, I heard that people sometimes make songs or rhymes to remember things. You’re musically inclined, maybe you could try that.”

Jesse perked up. “You’re right! Okay, let’s see.” He literally hummed while trying to think of a good song to memorize PEMDAS with. “Oh I think I’ve got it, thanks Lake.”

“Don’t thank me yet, see if you still remember it a week from now.”

“It was good advice so I’m going to thank you anyway. And don’t fight it.”

“Alright,” Jesse bent Lake’s rubber arm. “You’re welcome.”

“I have another question,” James said.

“Go for it,” Lake was feeling nice.

“You know how there’s that phenomenon scientists are trying to capture where a reflection doesn’t match up with what’s happening for just a split second? Do you know what that’s caused by?”

“Oh that?” Lake thought. “Well, if it’s happening with a living thing then that reflection was simply a little slow to keep up. I admit that I’ve desynched from Tulip once or twice. If it’s with something that isn’t alive then I don’t really know. The mirror world itself just might not have updated in time.”

“Updated?” Jesse asked, he never thought about inanimate objects when he asked all his questions on the train.

“Yep, I mean, obviously a bed can’t be a person so there aren’t a billion beds living in the mirror world that’d be weird and crowded,” Lake pondered how best to phrase things. “The world itself can change shape to match what is needed. Kind of like how I would change shape to match Tulip.”

“You’re a shapeshifter?” Charlie asked, he fully lost interest in his homework.

“A really shitty one,” Lake replied with a pout. “I can’t just will myself to look different from how I do. I kinda wish I could. Just rid myself of my awful chicken legs and maybe grow a couple-a inches taller or something. Buuuut. I can’t. At least my hair grows, I wasn’t completely sure if that would be a thing.”

“Huh,” Jesse found himself fully invested in this. “So you shaved your head not knowing if your hair would grow back. That takes commitment.”

“I guess? I wasn’t thinking that far ahead in all honesty,” Lake cleared their throat.

“Reflections are really cool,” James said. “I don’t want to bombard you with questions so I’ll stop for now. But would it be okay if I asked some more another time?”

“Sure,” Lake perked up. “Your questions are actually interesting.”

“And mine weren’t?” Jesse faked being offended.

“No! You asked if reflections go to the bathroom!” Lake knew Jesse was faking but they wanted to rant. “At that point you knew me for almost a week, you already knew that answer you dumbass.”

“Oh Jesse,” Charlie shook his head at him. “That one was crossing a line. You never ask a person about going to the bathroom.”

“Thank you,” Lake extended their hand to Charlie. “At least you have some sense.”

“Okay, but in my defense, I meant the ones still in mirrors,” Jesse scrambled.

“That’s not much better dude,” Charlie said with a laugh.

The conversation about stupid mirror questions continued for a little bit and then it was back to the study session which went on until dinner time where Whittney invited Charlie and James to stay over, and after that they went home.

Jesse managed to finish a decent amount of his homework, and Lake found that they really didn’t mind spending some time with new people.

“So, what’d you think of those friends?” Jesse asked once the front door was closed.

“Yeah I like them,” Lake replied. “And they seem like decent people.”

“So you’d be okay with me having them over again?”

“I hate that you feel like you need to ask for my permission,” Lake crossed their arms. “It’s your house.”

“Yours too. And I just want you to feel comfortable here.”

“Well I do without you trying so hard, and you can invite whoever you want over. I need to learn how to deal with people I don’t like anyway if I’m going to go to school.”

“That’s true, but I don’t think you have to worry too much about me inviting friends over you won’t like. I’m trying to stop being friends with butts.”

Lake tapped their toe with their mouth twisted. “I know.”

“My shiner’s really bothering you, isn’t it?”

“Yes! That shouldn’t have happened!” Lake gripped Jesse’s shoulders. “You shouldn’t have gotten punched by somebody you considered your friend.”

“That’s kind of why I ended up on the train,” Jesse said, he glanced down. “I was friends with everyone, even really bad people. Even ones who pressured me into being a terrible brother. I expected to get knocked around a bit while breaking things off with people.”

Lake gently placed their hand on Jesse’s swollen eye. 

He twitched at the sensation and then leaned into Lake’s hand. “That feels nice. Your hands are cold.”

“Oh so _now_ you like my cold hands. But when I checked you for broken ribs you hated them.”

The lack of a response told Lake that Jesse wasn’t really in the mood for the usual banter. “Who did it?” Lake questioned Jesse through gritted teeth.

“It’s not important now.”

Lake _had_ wanted to grill Jesse but he looked exhausted so they left things be.

Lake’s grip loosened as they sighed. “A situation like yours isn’t something I had to deal with when I was attached to Tulip.”

“What were the changes Tulip had to deal with?”

“Her parents got divorced.”

“Oh,” Jesse’s eyes widened. “That explains a lot actually. You always look so confused when our parents hug and kiss.”

“I’m not used to that anymore, Tulip’s parents used to be like that but then I saw their marriage steadily fall apart,” Lake paused. “Hey… is it weird that I call them by their first names? You know, your parents, _our_ parents? Like, we decided to call each other siblings, so I guess they’re my parents now too. But…”

“You’re not sure if you’re ready for parents yet?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s the simplest way of putting it. But it sounds so dumb.”

“I don’t think so. I mean, you’ve only lived here for a few weeks. Sometimes things take time.”

Lake leaned onto Jesse. “When did you get so smart?”

“I mean I did just spend almost three hours doing homework and studying.”

“Nah it’s not that, I think the train knocked some sense into you. You were probably always decent at people-things but now that you aren’t so… _like that_ you’re better at reading people. Or wording things. You know what I mean.”

“You’re probably right,” Jesse hugged Lake. “And if you want me stop saying ‘our parents’ I will.”

“Nah,” Lake relaxed in Jesse’s embrace. “You can keep doing that. It’ll help normalize the idea of having parents. For me anyway, I’m also not sure how they’d feel if I started calling them mom and dad.”

“Oh c’mon, you _know_ mom would be happy. And I know dad would be too.”

“I think I’ll stop thinking so hard about it and let things happens organically.”

“That’s definitely the right call. You can’t force things like family.”

“What a weird thing to say, most people consider family genetic and once you’re born you’re stuck with them.” Lake sounded oddly bitter.

“I don’t like the idea of that. True family’s in the heart.”

“God you are just the cheesiest person on planet Earth,” Lake held back a laugh. “But I like that sentiment. It’s good.”

Lake didn’t vocalize their next thought. “And it means that even I can have a family.”

“So back to Paper Mario,” Jesse knew it was about time to move on, both emotionally, and physically so the two started walking back to the living room. “I’ve watched a couple LPs of it, and I think you’d really like how Bowser’s written in those games.”

“Oh?” Lake perked up.

“Yeah, he’s really funny. He’s also like that in one of the games I have on my 3DS.”

“Which one?” Lake’s eyes were sparkling.

“The Bowser’s Inside Story Remake. I played that when it came out, I think you’ll like it if you like Bug Fables. They play kind of different but also pretty close.”

“Ooo.”

Jesse grinned. “I feel like I’ll be lending you my 3DS for a while.”

“And you’d be right about that.”

“So what show should we binge tonight? It’s a Friday night after all.”

“What about your piles and piles of homework?”

“I have time to finish all that.”

“Procrastinator.”

“What? No. I just know my limits, and how fast I work,” Jesse closed his eyes in a passionate way.

Lake raised their eyebrow. “I mean if you say so. But I feel like that’s a good way to screw yourself over.”

“I haven’t so far,” Jesse said with a shrug.

Lake flicked Jesse on the forehead.

“So I’m guessing you’re not planning on procrastinating once you’re in school,” Jesse rubbed his forehead.

“So you admit it’s procrastinating!” Lake jabbed Jesse in the chest.

“Wha-well… It kind of is. But not how I do it.”

“…Right. Anyway, I’m going to keep up with my homework. I can do it while I watch TV or whatever. I can multitask, and I feel like it’d be less stressful to do it that way. And trust me, I’ve had more than a lifetime’s worth of stress already.”

“That makes sense,” Jesse bit his tongue, he didn’t want to bring up Tulip, he suspected that was how she did things.

“I do hope you don’t fuck up entirely,” Lake said. “You have your methods I guess.”

“So what should we should binge tonight?”

“I want to finish She-Ra soon.”

“Okay, we can knock that out, and then on Saturday I want to watch Steven Universe. We’re pretty close to the movie now and you know what it is?”

“No, what?”

Jesse sang out, “A musical.”

“No wonder you’re so excited,” Lake said with a smile. “Am I going to have to listen to you singing songs from the movie for the next couple weeks?”

“Yeah probably, and maybe you’ll join in with me,” Jesse smirked. “I’ve heard you singing old songs.”

Lake blushed. “No! You heard that!”

“Why’s that so embarrassing? I like your singing.”

“Uuggghhh,” Lake buried their face in their hands.

“I think it just means you’re happy. And that makes me happy.”

With a sigh Lake calmed down. “Yeah. I am happy.”

* * *

One Saturday afternoon Jesse and Lake were chilling out on the couch together, leaning on each other as they often did. This time it was Jesse who was acting as the pillow.

“You know Jesse, I think I’m ready to try the mall again,” Lake didn’t look up from their game.

“You are?” Jesse looked down at Lake’s face hoping to make eye-contact but they were too focused on pulling off the timing for their moves.

“I’m pretty sure. My nightmares have mostly stopped, well, there was _that one_ recently but other than that… And I’m not crying every single time my mind isn’t busy.” Lake finally met Jesse’s eyes. “Would you be ready?”

Jesse had to think about that. “Probably. Like you I haven’t been having too many nightmares, and it’s been a while since I last cried.”

“God we’re messes.”

“We’re not messes anymore,” Jesse gently corrected Lake. “We’ve gotten way better.”

“Look at us, thinking we could go to the mall because we’re not crying,” sarcasm dripped from Lake’s voice. “We’re so well adjusted.”

Lake took another look at Jesse. “Sorry. We are actually doing a lot better. It just feels dumb how that’s how we’re judging if we’re ready or not.”

“We don’t have to go if you changed your mind,” as always, Jesse gave Lake a way out.

“No I haven’t changed my mind. I just had a moment where everything felt stupid. It’s probably the trauma. Or the depression. Or both. Who knows with me.” Lake sat up, and ran their fingers through their hair. “We might be using that grinder sooner than we expected.”

“Really?’ Jesse sounded mildly disappointed. “Your hair’s still pretty short.”

“It is, but I dunno, I miss my buzz cut.”

“It’s up to you but I think your current hair suits you,” Jesse suddenly felt bad. “Your old hair suits you too. I mean your buzz cut, not the hair you had in your wanted poster. Not that it looked bad either. So if you ever want to grow your hair out that’d be cool too.”

“You don’t have to try so hard to compliment me,” Lake said with a raised eyebrow. “Dork.”

“Wanna head to the garage then?”

“Alright.”

The two went into the garage, it was attached to the house and Jesse knew that they were about to make a lot of noise. He debated telling his mom what they were up to. But a nagging part in the back of his head told him that she would definitely stop them.

Lake turned on the grinder they had borrowed from Jesse’s uncle to get a feel for its movement and power.

“I dunno Lake, this seems dangerous,” Jesse was watching as Lake examined their tools for giving themself a haircut.

“It’s no more dangerous than using the wheels of a moving train,” Lake said as they set up a mirror and chair on top of a tarp. 

“Okay but you lost part of your eyebrow doing that.” 

“If I knew you’d be holding it over my head I wouldn’t have told you about that,” Lake said with a huff.

“Right, sorry. I’m just saying that I worry. Also-”

Lake ignored Jesse and started grinding their hair down.

“...You’re just going to start right now huh,” Jesse watched Lake for a bit. “So... how are you going to do the back?”

“I’ll just go by feel.”

“You know, maybe I should do it. I don’t want you accidentally giving yourself a bald spot.”

“You’re... probably right,” Lake almost didn’t want to admit it. “But get a feel for the tool first, okay? You might lose control if you don’t. And I would never forgive you if I ended up looking like an old man.”

“Yeah, of course,” that warning got Jesse a bit concerned. “I should probably put on some safety equipment, your hair’s really fine metal and that’s not fun for fleshy eyes like mine.”

Thankfully Stephan kept his garage fully stocked on safety gear. Jesse put it all on and to Lake he looked very silly. They couldn’t hold in a giggle. 

Jesse watched as Lake did all the parts they could easily see in the mirror, he made notes on how Lake avoided grinding chips out of their inflexible ears. 

Then it was Jesse’s turn to take over. He copied what Lake did earlier where they got a feel for the grinder. He found it more intimidating than he expected. 

And Lake noticed this. “I can always go with my original plan and just feel out the length. It’s probably better to start a bit longer and work your way down anyway.”

“How many times have you grinded your hair down?”

“Only a couple times on the train. My hair doesn’t grow very quickly. The first time I did it I just jumped right in. It turned out fine but I realized that _maybe_ it wasn’t a great idea to do it that way.”

“Because you slipped?”

“Because I slipped.”

“I’ll be careful,” Jesse felt that way for two reasons, one, he didn’t want to give Lake a bald spot, and two, his poor meat body could get seriously injured if he didn’t take care.

Jesse turned the angle grinder back on and not long afterwards Stephan barged into the garage; apparently he got off work early.

“Woah! Hey hey! What are you two doing!” He immediately unplugged the power tool. 

“Haircut,” Lake replied nonchalantly with only the back of their head covered in soft fluffy hair. 

“No! You’re not doing it with an angle grinder,” Stephan put his foot down on that one. “I know your hair is metal and clippers won’t work. But Lake, you’re smarter than this. And Jesse,” Stephan turned to his son, _“so are you.”_

“Yeah I’m not going to walk around looking like I’m a friar so we should probably finish the job, and then talk about how dumb I’m being.”

Stephan groaned. “I’m not saying you can’t shave your head. Just that there are better tools. You don’t have to jump straight into an angle grinder, where did you even get that?”

“Max,” Lake replied, Jesse motioned for them not to, but he was too late.

“Of course he did, and I bet he didn’t ask any questions either!” Stephan threw up his hands. “Look, I have a sander we can try and some low grit sandpaper. That should get the job done and you two won’t be nearly as likely to injure yourselves.” Stephan saw Lake about to talk. “Oh no, and none of that ‘I don’t really feel pain’ crap. I’m counting taking a chip out of yourself as an injury.”

That silenced Lake pretty quick. 

“Look,” Stephan sighed. “I’m going to do it for you because I have more experience with power tools than either of you. Jesse, give me the safety equipment. I will give you that, you thought to put it on.”

Jesse gave the gear to his dad and stepped away from Lake. Stephan briskly walked up to his collection of tools and pulled out one of his sanders. 

“Frankly I’m not even sure _this_ is a good idea,” he said. “You can watch, Jesse. I feel like you’re going to have to do this eventually.”

Lake tensed up when the sander was turned on.

“What’s wrong?” Stephan asked, as upset as he was, he still did want to keep an eye out for Lake.

“That sound just brought back some bad memories,” Lake exhaled. “It’s fine.”

“Why don’t we talk about it?”

“There isn’t much to talk about. The flecs chased me down with belt sanders.”

“I’m sorry, what? Belt sanders?”

“Yeah it’s lowkey fucked up now that I think about it. They were planning on slowly sanding me to death. An angle grinder would have so much faster. Just take my head off with it instead of dragging things out.” Lake laughed darkly.

Stephan sighed. “Please don’t joke about stuff like that.”

“Killing you in general is really messed up,” Jesse said. “Even _if_ you did do something wrong they shouldn’t have been trying to do that.”

“That whole situation was fucked up,” Stephan said. “So…”

The sander suddenly felt very heavy in his hands.

“Go for it,” Lake got back into position. “I trust you.”

With some hesitance Stephan started to sand Lake’s hair. He had firm control over the tool thanks to decades of experience. Their hair was fine enough to give away to the sandpaper.

It didn’t take too long for him to finish most of the job, and he even went as far as to even out the parts Lake did. Then Stephan got a much smaller sander and did behind their ears. 

“Look, see, much easier,” he said. “And less dangerous, but only mildly so. Lake, please get help. Okay? Preferably from me. I don’t want you hurting yourself.”

Lake felt their freshly sanded down hair. “Sure. And... thank you. It looks great.”

"You’re welcome,” Stephan found himself less mad about Lake’s rash decisions when he saw the way they looked at themself in the mirror. “But please-”

“-Get you next time,” Lake said. “I will.”

Stephan put his hand on Lake’s shoulder and gave them a kind look. “Thank you. That’s all I ask. I’ll try to figure out something better for us to use in the future.”

“I appreciate it. And I’m sorry for well, not really snapping at you, but that friar comment. I’m trying to get better about that sort of thing.”

“Meh,” Stephan rubbed Lake’s head. “I’ve said way worse to my parents when I was your age.”

Lake smirked. “You know, you’re going to have to share some of those stories with me.”

“When you’re an adult. I don’t want you getting any ideas.”

“Or alternatively, you tell me now and I’ll know better.”

Stephan smiled warmly. “Nice try.” He stood up and stretched his back. “Let’s clean up this mess.”

“We can do it,” Jesse offered. “It’s the least we can do.”

“Yeah, you go and relax,” Lake added to Jesse’s offer.

“Alright, you two clean up, and I’ll watch.”

Jesse pulled up the tarp he and Lake had set up earlier. “Wait… where do I shake this out? Like, outside I guess, but would your hair cause problems?”

“Problems?” Lake asked.

“You know, for the birds, or other animals. With human hair they can use it to make nests, and it’s like, bio-degradable or something. Metal kiiiind of isn’t.”

“That’s true,” Lake looked around the garage. “Hey Stephan, is it alright if we use that big garbage can of yours?”

“Of course,” Stephan replied.

Jesse carefully dumped all of Lake’s hair into the garbage can. And then the two of them left the garage with Stephan.

Lake decided that it was about time for a snack and they went into the kitchen where Whittney was preparing dinner.

She looked at Lake. “So that’s what all that noise was. You were getting a haircut. You look nice.”

“Oh, uh, yeah, and thanks,” Lake quickly opened the fridge, they were feeling bashful.

“Are you getting a snack?”

“I was,” Lake closed the fridge door with an apple in their hand.

“Put that back, we’re eating right away. You can have the apple later.”

With a frown Lake put their snack away. Then they watched Whittney cut vegetables. “Hey, would you like some help with that?”

“Sure,” Whittney was surprised by Lake’s offer. “Have you ever peeled vegetables before?”

“No.”

Whittney pulled another paring knife out of the drawer and handed it to Lake. Then she demonstrated how to use it.

“I thought they made a special tool for this,” Lake said as they copied what Whittney had just done.

“They do, but sometimes I just prefer using a knife because after I peel the vegetable I can just cut it immediately. And knives are easier to clean.”

“Makes sense.”

“Are you interested in cooking?”

“A little,” Lake frowned at the spotty job they did of peeling. “I like eating so I thought it’d be nice to try to learn how to cook. I’m a little surprised Jesse doesn’t help you.”

“Sometimes he does, but he doesn’t have the patience to peel vegetables. To be honest, he usually helps out when it’s something he can sample along the way.”

“That definitely sounds like him,” Lake said with a laugh, they put their first vegetable in the pile, and picked up another one. “Hey… me and Jesse would like to go to the mall tomorrow.”

“The mall?” Whittney looked down at Lake.

“We think we’re ready to give that another shot,” Lake lost some control of their knife and it harmlessly hit their thumb. “We talked about it earlier. Well, I brought it up. Because it’s one of the things I really want to conquer.”

“I can drive you two to the mall tomorrow,” Whittney cut up the vegetable Lake just finished peeling. “And out of curiosity, what other things do you want to do?”

“I’d like to go on a normal train,” Lake sighed. “Sometimes I sit outside at night and enjoy the silence, and look at the stars. And then I hear a train whistle and… Well… I get scared. I get scared that I’m going to end up back on the train and not have this life anymore. It’s so stupid, I’m not human; the train doesn’t care about me.” Lakes hands had started to badly shake so they put everything down until they could calm down.

Whittney rubbed Lake on the back to try to help calm them. “It’s not stupid, that’s a legitimate fear. The train is terrifying.”

“No the stupid part is thinking the train would even care about my issues,” Lake gripped the counter, and started to tear up.

Whittney quietly pulled Lake into a hug. “It’s difficult having your personhood denied. And in a lot of ways it doesn’t get much easier. But know this, you have people who care about you, and eventually you’ll meet people outside of this family who do too. And you can talk to us whenever you want. Okay?”

“Thanks,” Lake’s voice was quiet, and their hands became still. “I think I’m ready to go back to helping with dinner.”

“Alright,” Whittney understood that Lake needed to move on. “We’re pretty much done preparing the vegetables, and after that we need to…”

She went over the steps for making dinner with Lake, and then the two of them finished it up together.

It was delicious.

* * *

“You ready?” Jesse asked Lake once the two of them got out of the car in the mall parking lot.

“I am,” Lake replied. “Are you?”

“Yep,” Jesse sounded like it too.

Lake reached out for Jesse’s hand, he felt their fingers brush against his and took Lake’s hand.

“I’m kind of nervous I guess,” Lake said. “But I still want to do this.”

“While we’re in there we can look for some cool stuff to decorate your room with,” Jesse decided to ease his and Lake’s nerves by talking about the fun stuff they can do.

“We should pick out some cool posters for you,” Nate said.

“Yeah we can do that,” Lake said. “And don’t laugh, but I have an idea of something I wanna do. I want a corkboard so can put some pictures on it, and maybe some of my goals and things.”

“Why would I laugh about that?” Jesse asked. “It’s a good idea.”

“I dunno, it’s just, so frickin’ sappy.”

“You’ve told me how many times that I’m huge sap?”

“Okay, true. You would be the last person to laugh.”

The group reached the doors to the bookstore and went in.

“So are we looking or just passing through?” Lake asked.

“We can look around,” Whittney replied. “You’ve finished your book already, we can look for a new one for you.”

“Oh yeah, how was it?” Jesse asked.

“Pretty good,” Lake smiled. “The ending let me down slightly but not even close to enough to ruin the whole thing for me. Overall, I recommend it.”

“Good to know. So will you be picking up another sci-fi book?”

“I dunno. I figure I’ll just take a look around and see what jumps out at me.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Sure enough, as everybody looked through the store Lake checked out every genre, even including romance, and found a new book to take home. Nate and Jesse did too in the bargain section.

Then came the hard part, walking through the mall. Lake and Jesse steeled their nerves with a deep breath.

But, looking at everybody walking around the mall, and all the un-vandalized stores, it didn’t feel completely necessary.

“How are you feeling?” Jesse asked.

“Good, actually,” Lake replied as they looked around some more. “How about you?”

“Great!” Jesse smiled. “It’s not even overly busy today either. It’s pretty average.”

“Which store should we hit first?”

“I figure we could just go in order. You’ve never been to a mall before. But a lot of what’s in this one is clothing stores.”

“Hm. That’s okay, the main thing is actually getting through the mall.”

“There’s also a Target attached to it we can go to. And maybe pick some stuff out for your room in there.”

“Oh actually, we need a couple things for the bathroom,” Stephan said.

Lake’s stomach flipped, they knew what Stephan was talking about. It happened after a particularly bad nightmare…

They cleaned up the mess but still felt awful.

“It’s fine,” Stephan put his hand on Lake’s shoulder. “We needed to do some renovating anyway, that old mirror was ugly.”

“Sorry,” Lake placed their hand on Stephan’s.

“Don’t worry about it. Just have fun today, okay?”

“Okay,” Lake smiled slightly. “I’ll just focus on having a good time.”

“Yeah!” Nate grabbed Lake’s hand. “It’s not only clothes stores here, there’s some cool ones you’ll probably like.”

“Yep,” Jesse held Lake’s other hand with a cheerful expression.

The first half of the mall was trendy clothing stores so it took a little while for Lake to see something that jumped out at them. Jesse stopped at a Spencer’s Gifts thinking that maybe Lake would like something in there. It sort of seemed like their style.

“Oh geeze,” Lake read the price tag on a shirt they were interested in. “Yeah no, way too expensive.” They harshly whispered to Jesse. “Why did you bring me here? I can’t have our family spend that much on a shirt. It’s ridiculous.”

“I think that’s pretty normal for stores like this,” Jesse’s eyebrows were raised.

“Well fuck that then.”

“Huh, I didn’t think you would be so cheap.”

“Not cheap, _thrifty_. Most of the stuff I picked out while we went clothes shopping was on sale.”

“Was it? I didn’t actually pay attention.”

“Of course, clothes are expensive. Wait…” Lake around to fully face Jesse. “You don’t pay attention to price tags, do you?”

Jesse laughed nervously. “Not… really. I mean, I pay attention _enough._ But I don’t look for sales really.”

Lake gave him a flick on the forehead. “Well at least you kinda try.”

“I’m guessing you’re done in here,” Jesse said while rubbing his forehead. “But you can still look around, like you said; we’re not here to buy anything today.”

“Honestly,” Lake surveyed the store. “I don’t like how cramped it is in here. Even if it wasn’t so ridiculously expensive I’d kinda wanna leave.”

“That’s understandable.”

The two left the store and rejoined the rest of their family.

As they all walked through the mall they popped into a couple more stores that appealed to people other than Lake. Everything was nice, and calm. Being in such a large relaxed group helped keep Lake’s nerves at bay; they knew they were safe with their new family.

“Oh,” a particularly pointy store caught Lake’s attention.

“You’re not getting a knife,” Whittney said.

“I… I wasn’t going to ask for one, I just wanted to take a look.”

“And you can. I just wanted you to know that you aren’t getting anything from there.”

The trip to the knife and sword store didn’t take very long. Jesse happily listened to Lake and Nate as they talked about the cool things they did recognize.

He got a couple “Really Jesse? I was stuck in a mirror and I know this”es from Lake.

Which was amusing.

Before Jesse stepped out the store owner smiled at him and said, “Yeah being the oldest can be a little rough.”

Jesse politely smiled and left. He personally didn’t feel that way.

After a quick trip to a Gamestop everybody stopped off at the food court for a meal. It was loud and busy, as it always was around noon. Lake decided that it would just be easier to tag along with Jesse and eat wherever he did. They ended up getting Chinese food and Lake really enjoyed it, especially because they ended up just sharing everything with Jesse.

All their tummies settled and the family went into the attached Target. But because it was a department store Lake wasn’t as focused on checking out everything. They had been in one a few times before, it was the mall that was real hurdle.

Eventually while walking through the store the family came across an aisle full of mirrors. They needed a new one, after all.

As Lake walked through there they started to feel off, and the feeling just grew as they passed by more and more things. There was even one item with a convex mirror.

It was at this point Lake realized what they were feeling and rushed out of the aisle with their hand on their mouth and Jesse followed them.

“Oh, you’re looking a little green,” Jesse said after catching up with Lake. 

“I’m feeling really nauseous,” Lake swallowed.

“You are?”

“Yeah, I’ve been motion sick before, but never this bad.”

“Reflections can get motion sick?”

“We can. Usually it happened to me while reflecting in a bank pen, or something else that moved around a lot or put me upside-down.”

“Hm,” Jesse thought back to the aisle he just left as he rubbed Lake’s back in a circular motion. “Hey… do you think you might be so sick because you’re out here in the prime world?”

“Maybe. I was feeling disoriented which is new, but either way; I’m not going back down there.”

“Would you like to take a Pepto tablet?” 

Lake looked up and saw Whittney’s concerned face. 

“I don’t know if that’d even work for me,” Lake replied.

“I don’t think there’s any harm in trying,” Whittney dug through her purse and pulled out a little plastic sleeve with pink disks in it. She passed it to Lake. “But maybe just take one for now.”

Lake accepted Whittney’s offer and tried to rip open the packaging and thanks to their shaky hands they ended up crumbling the tablet instead. Lake clicked their tongue. 

“I usually end up just using my teeth.”

“Alright,” Lake tore open the compartment with their teeth.

“You don’t need to eat the broken one, it’s fine.”

But Whittney’s words were pointless, Lake had already poured the powder into their hand and licked it off. So Whittney simply pulled some hand sanitizer out of her purse and gave that to Lake. 

“Thanks,” Lake squirted the sanitizer in their hands, however, there was a problem. “My skin doesn’t actually absorb anything.” Before Lake even finished their sentence they were passed some napkins. “Is there anything you don’t have in your purse?”

Whittney opened it up and took a look. “I don’t have anything to drink.”

“I could drink anything if I really wanted,” Lake said with a smirk. 

“Please stick to actual drinks,” Whittney said.

“Nah, I'm just joking. I have better taste than that”

“Are you feeling any better?” Jesse asked. “I mean, you _seem_ better.”

“Yeah, I’m doing okay,” Lake replied. “We can keep walking. But I don’t want to go near that many reflective surfaces again for a while.”

Jesse giggled.

Lake looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “What?”

“Your tongue’s pink,” he said with a goofy look.

“So Lake,” Whittney spoked softly. “You can take Nate and Jesse and look somewhere else while you’re trying to feel better. I’m almost done picking out a mirror with Stephan.”

“Sure,” Lake rubbed the back of their head. “I guess we’ll just be hanging around magazines or arts and crafts or something.”

“I’ll meet you there,” Whittney smiled and rejoined her husband, Nate quickly ran out of the boring aisle to hang out with his siblings.

He laughed when he saw Lake talking. “Your tongue’s pink.”

Lake rolled their eyes. Sometimes those brothers were a little _too_ alike.

“So how are you feeling?” Jesse asked as he looked through the magazines for one that was at least a little interesting.

“I don’t feel as much like barfing now,” Lake replied, nothing stood out to them either.

“That’s good,” Nate said, he found something at least.

“It is,” Jesse said. “But I meant something else.”

“Ah, that,” Lake put their hands on their hips. “Yeah, I’m doing good on that front too. And I’m glad. It was nice just killing time like this, looking around at a bunch of stuff. So how are you holding up?”

“Pretty well!” Jesse grinned. “Well, to be honest, there was a moment where I got a little shaky. But you were there so it was fine.”

“Huh, I didn’t even notice,” Lake blushed. “Honestly, I saw a hat like Mace’s in a crowd and had a moment where I forgot he was gone.”

“Oh that’s what that was,” Jesse said, he lifted his hand and pointed at it with a smile. “You almost crushed my poor hand.”

“Oh no…” Lake cringed.

“Ah it’s okay,” Jesse shrugged it off. “I’m just happy this is going so well.”

“I am too, I’m glad we decided to do this.”

“So I’m about done with this magazine rack. Would you two want to check out the posters? They should be pretty closeby.”

“And I want to find a corkboard, remember.”

“Of course.”

“Yep, I’m done here too,” Nate said as he put down his magazine. “And I’m so excited to pick out a cool poster for Lake.”

“Now hold on buddy, it’s going in my room so I have the final say,” this was a rare case of Lake even somewhat putting their foot down while talking to Nate.

“I know,” he said. “But I still wanna find something you’d really like.”

“Alright,” Lake smiled and ruffled Nate’s hair. “I’m sure you’ll make a good choice.”

“Do you think I will too?” Jesse asked playfully.

“Mmmm…” Lake mock-thought for a minute. “Maybe.”

Jesse dramatically put his hands to his chest. “You hurt me. Have a little faith.”

“I do, that’s why it was a maybe.”

With a laugh the trio looked at posters.

As soon as Whittney and Stephan caught up the shopping trip continued properly. Lake left the mall with two new posters, a book, and a corkboard.

And a feeling in their heart their new life was pretty great.

And a feeling that everything was going to be all right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys enjoyed Night and Day! This update took so long because well, I was lacking creative energy for a bit and then a really good game ate up so much of my free time, you can probably guess which game. *coughs*
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I appreciate all of you.

**Author's Note:**

> Looks guys, half of this is going to be Jesse gushing about Lake seeing more of the world. I'm not sorry.


End file.
